Pufendorf’s Moral and Political Philosophy

First published Fri Sep 3, 2010; substantive revision Tue Nov 3, 2015

Samuel Freiherr von Pufendorf (1632–1694) was almost as
unknown during most of the 19th and 20th centuries as he had been
familiar during the preceding hundred years and more. His fate shows
well how philosophical interests shape historical background
narratives. More or less consciously, individual thinkers and the
traditions they spawn frame themselves in terms of an edited past
which – as in other forms of genealogy – they either
appropriate, reject, revise, or ignore. Thus intellectual ancestry is
always more controversial than biological inheritance, and the mere
presence or absence of thinkers in particular developmental accounts
is not necessarily an accurate indication of their actual historical
role or importance.

Pufendorf’s thought is situated in post-Westphalian Europe, as the
Holy Roman Empire underwent a reconfiguration of power relationships
among its quasi-autonomous constituent states (Austria, Bavaria,
Palatinate, Saxony, Brandenburg, and others), while maintaining a
guarded posture toward external, competing powers such as France,
England, the United Provinces, Sweden, Denmark, Poland, and Spain. Its
main goals were to avoid relapse into confessional warfare, and to
ward off the respective French and Ottoman threats on its western and
eastern borders. In this context Pufendorf developed a theory about
the moral relationships of agents (individuals and groups), the
authority and duties of states, and the lawful interactions among
these. His chief objective, too, was to avoid destructive social
conflict and the devolution on any level into the antagonistic and, he
thought, self-defeating condition known as the state of nature.

Pufendorf’s approach was secular, non-metaphysical, and
anti-authoritarian; it eschewed religious appeals, scholastic dogma,
essentialism, teleology, and the frequent mix of these that appealed
to many German thinkers, Catholic and Protestant alike. Instead, it
built on Bodin, Lipsius, Grotius, Hobbes, and the Italian
reason-of-state tradition. Because of it, Pufendorf is known as a
voluntarist in ethics, a sovereignty theorist in politics, and a
realist in international relations theory. His kind of natural law is
called ‘modern’ or ‘Protestant’ (Tuck 1987,
Haakonssen 2004), in contrast to the metaphysical, neoscholastic,
rationalist, or even Platonic version of the genre represented not
only by the School of Salamanca (Suarez, Vitoria) but also Leibniz and
then Wolff. Known as a philosopher and a jurist, Pufendorf was also a
respected historian whose accounts of (mostly, the external relations
of) various European states exemplified his basic philosophical
concepts. He wrote notably on church-state relations, on intellectual
and religious toleration, and on the Baconian theme of innovation in
philosophy. Because of the clarity and comprehensiveness of his works,
their intellectual acuity, and their polemical edge and consequent
notoriety, they were translated into many European languages and thus
provided – often in the form of pedagogical tools – many of
the basic concepts and distinctions operative in the 18th-century
discourse about morality, society, politics, history, and
international affairs. Indeed, both directly and through his many
editors, translators, and imitators, Pufendorf was largely responsible
for the so-called ubiquity of natural law as a shared discourse during
the following century. (Haakonssen 2012)

Samuel Pufendorf was born on January 8, 1632 in Dorfchemnitz, a small
town southwest of Chemnitz in Saxony. The region’s Protestant elector,
Johann Georg, had just been compelled by the Imperial Edict of
Restitution (1629), and by Tilly’s sack of Magdeburg (1631), to
abandon his neutral stance in the Thirty Years War and join the newly
arrived (1630) Swedes under Gustavus Adolphus in an anti-Habsburg
alliance. This, and his return to the Imperial fold in 1635, exposed
his territories to previously avoided predations that would influence
the young Pufendorf’s outlook on the Empire, religion, and political
power – if not also the human condition more generally. Samuel’s
father, Esaias Pufendorf, assumed the Lutheran pastorate at nearby
Flöha in 1633, and it was there a few years later that the family
experienced first-hand the terrors of the war. (Döring 1996a)
There were ten children beside Samuel, seven of whom survived to
adulthood. Of these he was the second youngest of four brothers, some
three years behind Esaias (1628–1687), who would become one of
Europe’s most accomplished diplomats and remained, as well, Samuel’s
lifelong confidant and benefactor. (Bérenger 1993, Fiedler
2003) The dedication in Pufendorf’s Select Academic
Dissertations (Dissertationes academicae selectiores
1675b) acknowledges the debt.

Like his brothers, Pufendorf was home-schooled until age thirteen
(1645), when his poverty and Latinity qualified him for admission to
the subsidized Fürstenschule at Grimma, near
Leipzig. There he studied grammar, logic, rhetoric, the Bible,
Lutheran theology, and the Greek and Latin classics. (Meyer 1894) His
particular relish for the latter laid the foundations of the broad
philological competence evident in and formative of his natural law
writings. Indeed, shortly before leaving for Leipzig in the fall of
1650 he was chosen to compose a Latin poem celebrating the 100th
anniversary of the school.

Leipzig: The university at Leipzig was far more cultivated and diverse
than acknowledged by 19th-century authors like Treitschke (Treitschke
1897; Döring 2004, 1994), though it remained a center of Lutheran
orthodoxy, polemically anti-Calvinist and anti-Catholic, and generally
devoted to a metaphysical scholasticism and Aristotelianism closely
tied to theology. Samuel’s studies there included this discipline,
which his father had intended as a preparation for the ministry.
However, like his brother Esaias, and as indicated by his own
extra-curricular activities in the Collegium
Anthologicum – a student academic society before which he
made some fifty presentations on philological, biblical, historical,
and political themes (Pufendorf 1995e, pp. 21–86; Döring
1988,1992) – he also expanded his studies into other areas
including philosophy, jurisprudence, and mathematics. He remained at
Leipzig until early 1658, with an intervening year (1657) at Jena
where he received his Magister (bachelor’s) degree. In Jena,
Pufendorf (like Leibniz after him) lived and studied with Erhard
Weigel (1625–1699), the eclectic mathematician and polymath (who
had moved there from Leipzig several years earlier) by whom he was
introduced to Galileo, Grotius, Descartes, and Hobbes – authors
without whom his future views would have been unimaginable. It was
from Weigel, too, that Pufendorf seems to have derived the important
distinction between physical and moral entities, as well as the
methodological ideal of a mathematically rigorous, or demonstrative
system of moral philosophy (Sprenger 1996) to which he initially
aspired (especially in distinguishing himself from Aristotelian virtue
theory).

Denmark: Sweden’s involvement in the Thirty Years War and its stake in
the Westphalian treaty that ended it increased the presence of its
aristocrats at many German courts and universities, including Leipzig
and Heidelberg. Esaias had already parlayed such contacts into a
Swedish diplomatic career and now urged his brother to do the same, in
view of the limited professional prospects in Saxony. Thus, in April
1658 Samuel assumed the post of tutor to the family of Sweden’s
special envoy to Copenhagen, Peter Julius Coyet. This choice proved
eventful, for when Charles X. Gustav unexpectedly renewed the First
Northern War (1655–1660) against Denmark, the Swedish delegation
was imprisoned for eight months. It was then, without access to
library or books, that Pufendorf wrote his first major work, Two
Books on the Elements of Universal Jurisprudence (Elementorum
jurisprudentiae universalis libri II, Pufendorf 1660, 1999),
which is explicitly based on Grotius and Hobbes. Upon being released
in 1659, and after a serious illness and nearly dying by shipwreck in
the Baltic, Pufendorf went to Holland as Coyet’s secretary. In spring
1660 he was enrolled at Leiden University, and though we have few
details about this period it appears that he turned to philology
again. He became acquainted with the classical scholar Johann
Friedrich Gronovius and prepared editions of several Neo-Latin works,
including Johannes Meursius, Miscellanea Laconica (1660) and
Johannes Lauremberg, Graecia antiqua (1661). More important,
however, was his acquaintance with Peter de Groot, Hugo’s son and the
Palatine Elector’s representative in Holland. For it was at his
suggestion that Pufendorf strategically dedicated his captivity
manuscript to Karl Ludwig (1617–1680), who promptly responded
with the offer of a university position at Heidelberg. (Döring
2006)

Heidelberg: The Palatinate was one of the most devastated and
depopulated regions during the Thirty Years War, and its university
reopened only in 1652. Karl Ludwig sought initially to install
Pufendorf in the (upper) law faculty there, as there was a vacancy in
Roman law (Justinian’s Institutes). However, when both
Pufendorf and the faculty senate demurred, the offer became a
professorship in “philology and the law of nations” within
the (lower, or preparatory) philosophy faculty – a position that
addressed both the university’s needs and Pufendorf’s more obvious
qualifications. There is no clear basis for Pufendorf’s claim to have
held the very first chair in “the law of nature and of
nations” in Germany, and no support for the academic legend that
he later sought a position in the law faculty and, when passed over,
spitefully wrote The Present State of Germany (De statu
imperii Germanici, Pufendorf 1667, 2007) – a severe critique
of legal theories about the Empire – to prove his qualifications.
(Döring 2006) Much of Pufendorf’s time in Heidelberg was taken up
with lecturing (on Grotius and Tacitus), and with developing the ideas
of the Elements, particularly through a series of
dissertations that – according to the practice of the time
– were written mostly by himself but defended orally by his
students. The latter included a number of Swedish nobles – such as
his former charge, the young (Wilhelm Julius) Coyet, and the son of
the Swedish chancellor Gabriel Gabrielsson Oxenstierna, and the
(illegitimate) son of the late Charles X. Gustav (Gustav
Carlsson) – some of whom also resided with Pufendorf. These and
other services on behalf of Sweden’s interests in Heidelberg, and the
continuing support of Esaias, led to the offer, in late 1666, of a
position at the newly established University of Lund (in Scania, the
Danish province recently acquired by Sweden). Pufendorf’s departure
from Heidelberg was apparently a career move and he always spoke
positively of his time there, explicitly valuing the “freedom to
philosophize” that he had enjoyed. (Jägerskjöld
1985)

Sweden: Pufendorf arrived in Lund in 1668 to assume his position as
professor primarius of the law of nature and of nations (in
the Law faculty), and of ethics and politics (in the Philosophy
faculty). Immediately popular as a teacher, well-connected at court,
as well as confident and outspoken, he was soon embroiled in personal
and academic conflicts with some of his colleagues, particularly the
jurist Nikolaus Beckmann and the theologian Josua Schwartz, who
recruited the Lutheran bishop of Lund (Peter Winstrup) to their
cause. Their discontent with Pufendorf’s On the Law of Nature and
of Nations (De jure naturae et gentium = DJN [1672],
Pufendorf 1998a), whose publication they actively tried to hinder, was
articulated in An Index of Certain Novelties … against the
Foundations of Orthodoxy (Index quarundam novitatum …
contra orthodoxa fundamenta [1673]) – a list of thirty-one
supposed errors in that work. The religious coloration of some
accusations made it a dangerous matter for Pufendorf, yet he managed
through his court connections to suppress both the Index and
the relentless attacks in Lund (Beckmann was eventually banished).
Still, the Index led to the prohibition of Pufendorf’s work
in Saxony and embroiled him in bitter conflicts with professors there
for many years. His articulate responses during this prolonged debate,
including his self-justificatory autobiography, were later published
under the title of Scandinavian Quarrel (Eris
Scandica, Pufendorf 1686c, 2002b). The collection not only
reveals Pufendorf as a consummate polemicist but is also valuable for
the clarification of important points in his natural law treatises,
and as an entry into the bitter debates (in Germany) between secular
natural lawyers and the Lutheran scholastics and theologians whom they
challenged. (De Angelis 2004)

In 1673 Pufendorf published On the Duty of Man and Citizen
According to Natural Law (De officio hominis et civis juxta
legem naturalem, Pufendorf 1673, 1997), a short compendium based
on DJN that guaranteed him a place in university curricula for a
century. Moreover, a collection of his dissertations from both the
Heidelberg and Lund periods appeared in 1675 as Select Academic
Dissertations (Dissertationes academicae
selectiores). That year also saw the appearance of a lengthy
political tract (Discussion of Certain Writers of Brandenburg
… [Discussio quorundam scriptorum Brandeburgicorum
…]) justifying Sweden’s entry into the Dutch War
(1672–1678) on the side of France, particularly its unprovoked
attack (1674) on Brandenburg. (Pufendorf 1675a, 1676, and 1995e,
pp. 235–336) The war also occasioned a Danish invasion of
Scania, including Lund, and even though the young Charles XI
(1655–1697) defeated the invaders, the university remained
closed for years. So Pufendorf moved to Stockholm (1677), assuming the
duties of royal Swedish historiographer and, later, privy councillor
and private secretary (1682) to the dowager queen, Hedwig Eleonora. He
continued to cultivate his relations with the Swedish ruling class,
wrote additional political opinions (including the Dissertation on
the Alliances between Sweden and France [De occasionibus
foederum inter Sueciam et Galliam; Pufendorf 1680, 1707, 1708,
1709, and 1995e, pp. 337–385]; see Saunders 2009), and began the
laborious archival work that underlay his large histories of Sweden
(Pufendorf 1686a, 1696b). These accounts focused mainly on external,
international affairs. However, Pufendorf’s detailed knowledge of
internal Swedish politics is evident in Les anecdotes de
Suède (Pufendorf 1719), which was written during Sweden’s
turn toward royal absolutism in the 1680s (the
Reduktion). That piece has sometimes been attributed to
Esaias, though there is an autograph in Samuel’s hand. (Döring
2012, p. 199, n. 58)

Pufendorf had also lectured on history at Lund and Heidelberg, and in
1682 after the appearance of a pirated, Swedish version of this
material based on student notes, he issued (one of only two works in
German) An Introduction to the History of the Principal Kingdoms
and States of Europe (Einleitung zu der Historie der
vornehmsten Reiche und Staaten so itziger Zeit in Europa sich
befinden, Pufendorf 1682, 2013). The twelfth chapter of this work
contains a long, critical account of the papacy that had appeared
pseudonymously several years earlier (Basilii Hyperetae
historische und politische Beschreibung der geistlichen Monarchie des
Stuhls zu Rom [1679], Pufendorf 1691b). Moreover, through the
1695 English version it acquired a thirteenth chapter, which is a
actually a condensation – by the translator (see Seidler 2013)
– of the independent volume on Sweden (the Continued
Introduction … [Continuirte Einleitung zu
…]) whereby Pufendorf had supplemented the
Introduction in 1686. Both Introductions underwent
multiple editions in many languages well into the 18th century. During
the early 1680s Pufendorf also prepared a significantly revised
edition (1684) of DJN which emphasized the similarities to Cumberland
and Stoicism (Palladini 2002, Saastamoinen 1999/2000) to make its
problematic Hobbesian inheritance less obvious and, perhaps, his life
easier (Palladini 1990, 2008).

Berlin: During one of his trips to the Continent to gather archival
materials and see to the publication of his Twenty-six Books of
Commentary on Swedish Affairs from the Expedition of King Gustav
Adolph into Germany up to the Abdication of [Queen]
Christina (Commentariorum de rebus Suecicis libri XXVI ab
expeditione Gustavi Adolfi regis in Germaniam ad abdicationem usque
Christinae, Pufendorf 1686a, 1688), Pufendorf entered into
negotiations with the Great Elector, Frederick William of Brandenburg,
who issued a formal invitation in 1686. This was doubly attractive at
the time. For not only had Brandenburg replaced Sweden as the main
defender of an increasingly beleaguered Protestantism, now squeezed
between Austria and France, but Sweden’s internal affairs had taken a
sharp turn to the right, toward monarchical absolutism and religious
conservatism. In Berlin, by contrast, Frederick William’s
long-standing toleration politics met Louis XIV’s recent revocation of
the Edict of Nantes with the Edict of Potsdam (1685), which invited
the fleeing Huguenots to his territories. Also in Stockholm, despite
Pufendorf’s still close relations to Charles XI and Hedwig Eleonora,
some of his main supporters at court had been dismissed, and his
brother Esaias – whose pro-French stance was now out of
favor – would soon leave Swedish service (1687) and be sentenced
to death in absentia (1689). Among the last works written by
Pufendorf in Sweden was a defense of Cartesianism (in the sense of
independent philosophical inquiry) against the Swedish clergy, who had
sought to ban it from the universities there (Pufendorf 1995e,
pp. 432–47), and Of the Nature and Qualification of Religion
in Reference to Civil Society (De habitu religionis
christianae ad vitam civilem [1687], Pufendorf 2002c), a treatise
that condemned the French dragonades and argued for the separation of
church and state as a means to religious toleration.

Given the Swedes’ past hostilities with Brandenburg, Pufendorf’s
thorough knowledge of their archives, and the fact that he had yet to
complete his history of Charles X. Gustav, the Swedes were loath to
send him to Berlin. However, after considerable delay he was given
what was technically a leave of absence. (Döring 1996b, Riches
2004, 2013) He arrived in Berlin in early 1688, actually to prepare a
history of Frederick William (who died later that year) but formally
as an aulic and privy councillor, positions with greater status at
court than royal historian. During the next six years Pufendorf
completed his history of the Great Elector (Pufendorf 1695b) and began
an account of his successor, Frederick III (1657–1713), which is
notable for its long (and unregarded) narrative of the 1688 English
Revolution (Pufendorf 1784, see Seidler 1996). Moreover, he prepared
a revised edition of The Present State of Germany (published
by Nikolaus Gundling in 1706) and he wrote The Divine Feudal
Law (Jus feciale divinum, Pufendorf 1695a, 2004, 2002a),
a work on inter-confessional reconciliation (among Lutherans and
Calvinists) and, barring that, religious and political toleration. In
1694 Pufendorf returned briefly to Sweden to arrange for the
publication of his Charles Gustav (De rebus a Carolo
Gustavo Sueciae rege gestis commentariorum libri septem,
Pufendorf 1696), to collect a baronetcy (thus, his Freiherr
status), and to conduct some diplomatic business between the two
monarchs. A stroke or aneurism while in Stockholm led to other medical
complications that resulted in his death, in Berlin, on Oct. 26,
1694. Quite appropriately, given his life-long interest in lay
theology and his involvement with informal religious gatherings called
collegia pietatis, as well as his emphasis on the biblical
and moral dimensions of religion rather than its doctrinal aspects,
the funeral sermon at the Nikolai-Kirche, where he lies buried, was
delivered by his close friend, Philipp Jakob Spener (1635–1705),
one of the founders of German Pietism.

The intellectual tradition with which Pufendorf is associated, and to
which he was later seen as central, has been variously termed modern,
secular, or Protestant. Indeed, the first chapter of his Sample of
Controversies (Specimen controversiarum [1678], in
Pufendorf 1686c, 2002b) originated the historiography of the
genre. (See section 5.2 below.) As critics of that self-interpretation
have pointed out and Pufendorf himself admitted, elements of the
approach were already present in previous traditions, including
Stoicism, Roman law, Christian and scholastic thought (particularly
Vitoria, Vasquez, and Suarez), and the Grotius commentary
literature. (Tierney 1997, Brett 1997, Haakonssen 1998, Seelmann 2000,
Oakley 2005, Behme 1996, Hartung 2008, Reibstein 1953–54) Still,
Pufendorf and those who shared his outlook claimed a kind of Baconian
novelty for their enterprise. This lay in its eschewal of metaphysics
and theology as foundations for philosophy, in its rejection of
appeals to authority, and in its assertion of an
‘eclectic’ privilege not only to mix and compare different
perspectives, but also to place new bodies of knowledge on a so-called
scientific footing. (Pufendorf 1996, p. 194; Hochstrasser 2000) The
founder (in the sense of first practitioner) of this so-called
“noble discipline of natural law” was according to
Pufendorf “the incomparable Hugo Grotius,” who “set
out to construct a work wherein he was not ruled by the influence of
his precedessors” and that resisted the fragmenting tendencies
of discrepant opinions. (Pufendorf 2002b, p. 126) Pufendorf’s
assessment was seconded by his French translator, Jean Barbeyrac
(1674–1744), who noted too that with Bacon and Grotius
“the Science of Morality was … rais’d again from the
Dead” (Barbeyrac [1706] 2005, §28, p.78), and that it was
Pufendorf who had corrected, improved, and systematized it.
(§31)

The controversial beginning (and eventual locus classicus) of
the new approach, which would aspire to rigor and persuasion in morals
and politics in the way that Descartes had sought them for science and
metaphysics, was Grotius’s “Preliminary Discourse” or
Prolegomena (§§ 5–8) to On the Right of
War and Peace (De jure belli ac pacis [1625]). For
there, the Dutch classicist, ambassador, and corporate counsel for the
Dutch East India Company challenged the moral relativism advocated by
the ancient skeptic, Carneades, by laying out the basic requirements
of communal living. Unlike Carneades, his professional concerns were
not epistemological argument, moral proof, or philosophical system as
such, but rather the concrete mitigation of conflicts and the
maintenance of peace. Appealing to a so-called principle of sociality
or sociability (conceived as both presupposition and requirement), he
sought to identify the most general or minimal, and thus most widely
acceptable, rights and laws of human association. These focused
mainly, in his own case, on international matters of war and peace,
but in other natural lawyers like Pufendorf they addressed the entire
range of human affairs. The modernity of the project, as well as its
secularism, lay as noted in the intentional avoidance of biblical,
theological, and confessional presuppositions, and in the rejection of
the essentialism and associated teleology of classical (abstract)
realism – which were thought to generate or exacerbate rather than
to resolve intellectual and practical controversies. (Forbes 1975,
Tuck 1979 and 1987, Todescan 2001, Ekardt and Richter 2006, Hunter
2007b) Instead, and in the manner of the physical sciences, the new
discipline devised explanations that emulated (somehow) mathematical
reasoning and appealed to concrete observation, attempting thereby to
create a shared outlook possessing theoretical coherence, empirical
plausibility, and pragmatic effect. (Röd 1970, Dufour 1980)

This reading of the modern natural law project is rooted in the
texts, it was promoted by Barbeyrac, and it has been persuasively
articulated mainly by Tuck (1979, 1987). However, aside from
criticisms focused on its casting of Grotius and Hobbes (Mautner 2005,
Sommerville 2001, Zagorin 2000), it also seems wanting now as a
comprehensive interpretation of Pufendorf by being too inattentive to
his more immediate social and intellectual contexts. These included
the political and confessional status of the Empire and, more
specifically, the metaphysical, theological, and Lutheran culture of
northern Germany, Saxony in particular – as represented by
conservative, Platonizing scholastics like Johann Benedict Carpzov,
Adam Scherzer, Valentin Veltheim, and Valentin Alberti, with whom
Pufendorf and his younger colleague, Christian Thomasius
(1655–1728), contended through much of their academic
lives. (Hunter 2007b, 2001; Palladini 1978; Sparn 1976) This conflict
was practical and immediate as well as theoretical, affecting German
academic culture for another century up to and including Kant (Hunter
2005). For the opponents propounded a theocratic politics guided by
Scriptural interpretation and supernatural metaphysics accessible only
or especially to (philosophical) theologians, in contrast to the
secular conception of the state and its subsidiary institutions (such
as the judiciary and the universities) proposed by Pufendorf and
Thomasius. In fact, the two readings may intersect and complement one
another. For Grotius, Hobbes, and also Descartes (especially his idea
of philosophical liberation and innovation) certainly influenced
Pufendorf, albeit in a characteristically German, Protestant, and
Lutheran setting that he helped to transform with their
assistance. (Friedeburg 2008, Friedeburg and Seidler 2007, Dufour
2005, Schmoeckel 2013b)

Clearly, early modern Protestantism was in this as well as other
respects a house divided, pitting those inclined to transcendent
metaphysics and theological authority against the innovators who
rejected this approach. Of course, it is the latter stream – to
which Grotius, Hobbes, Pufendorf, C. Thomasius, (and sometimes Wolff)
are seen to belong – that is intended by the characterization of
early modern natural law as distinctively
‘Protestant’. Because of its rejection of scholastic
rationalism and universalism, and its interest in the particular, the
singular, and the irregular (Seidler 2011) on various levels of
analysis (i.e., its appreciation of difference and insistence on
dissent, its ‘protestant’ and broadly
anti-‘imperial’ character), the discipline is also aptly
described as ‘individualistic’ (Haakonssen 2004). And this
feature links it, in turn, to the characteristic
‘voluntarism’ of the genre (Schneewind 1998, Haakonssen
1998), in distinction to the generally intellectualist bent of both
ancient and medieval natural law. (Hunter 2003b, Haakonssen and
Seidler 2015) Voluntarism acknowledged not only God’s supreme and
singular omnipotence (exercised through the divine will), and thus the
(to us) arbitrariness, contingency, and cognitive imperviousness of
the (created) world, but also humans’ individual and collective power
over, and thus responsibility for, their own actions and the
institutional contexts regulating them. In sum, the approach was
secular rather than atheistic, as it typically combined relatively
sparse convictions derived from natural theology (understood as a
minimalist philosophical view about a creative, providential deity and
his formal role in generating moral obligation) with an emphasis on
personal religiosity and confessional neutrality, especially in the
political sphere. That is, it privatized (and to some extent
moralized) religion, it demarcated theology from philosophy (Tully
1991), and it denied theoretical and political advantage to
dogmatists, including those inclined to play the God card from the
side of reason or philosophical metaphysics.

Like other early modern reformist schemes, Pufendorf’s project faced
the central question of method in more specific terms. Initially he
followed the example of Weigel, his Cartesian mentor at Jena (whose
own Arithmetic Description of Moral Wisdom about Persons and
Things [Arithmetische Beschreibung der Moral-Weißheit
von Personen und Sachen] appeared only in 1674; see Weigel 2003),
by employing a quasi-mathematical approach that aspired to
demonstrative certitude in moral matters in place of Aristotelian
probabilism. Thus, the early EJU (1660) was formally divided into
Definitions (Bk.1) and Principles (Bk.2), with the latter subdivided
into Axioms and Observations. The truth and necessity of the Axioms
flowed directly “from reason itself” and a “bare
intuition of the mind,” without the apprehension of particulars,
or interpersonal discussion, while the certainty of the Observations
was known by the “collation and perception of individual things
corresponding to one another,” and by “common sense and
experience” (Pufendorf 1999, pp. 6, 117; Dufour 1980, Röd
1970, Bach 2013).

However, Pufendorf adapted this approach in subsequent works. Though
he purported still to favor a ‘mathematical’ over an (“lubrica,
infinita, et vere invia”) empirical approach when writing to
(Johan Christian von) Boineburg (1622–1672) in January 1663 (Pufendorf
1996, p. 24), criticism by Hermann Conring (1601–1681) and
Johann Heinrich Boecler (1611–1672; see Palladini 1997a), which
urged him to include a consideration of other writers, particularly
the ancients, soon led to a change in style. Thus, beginning with his
dissertations at Heidelberg, and then in the major natural law
writings at Lund that emerged therefrom, Pufendorf eliminated the
formal scaffolding of the
mos geometricus and interacted more explicitly and directly
with other, historical authors. The new approach enlisted his
considerable erudition (the Dissertations cites over two
hundred sources) – in a transitional culture where a reputation
for being learned remained important – while avoiding mere
commentary or appeal to intellectual authority, procedures which he
explicitly dismissed. Instead, Pufendorf now employed an ‘eclectic’
method that still involved rational analysis and argument, to be sure,
but that also acknowledged the contingency of both his worldly subject
matter and its intellectual construal. (Hochstrasser 2000) The goal
remained comprehensive understanding and demonstrative certitude, but
one informed by wide and reflectively appropriated experience (derived
from a careful study of history and contemporary events), and thus
yielding a more empirically grounded and realistic (think Thucydides,
Tacitus, Machiavelli, Lipsius, Hobbes) sort of moral and political
argument.

Pufendorf’s ethical voluntarism is articulated through the notion of
“moral entities” (entia moralia, derived from
Weigel), to which most of EJU Book I is devoted. (Röd 1969,
Kobusch 1996, Lutterbeck 2009) Moral entities specify the basic terms,
concepts, categories, distinctions, and classifications – in a
sense, the metaethical grammar and vocabulary – out of which
shared moral discourse is constituted. Conversely, they designate the
ontological correlates or referents of this discourse, which are
reliant on and yet distinct from the merely physical beings or
settings in which they actually inhere. (See Pufendorf 1990, #1,
pp. 83–84, 109–10, for the compositional metaphor.) Much
of the machinery of moral entities was carried forward from the EJU to
DJN where, after being formally elaborated in the early chapters, it
clearly structures the whole work.

Pufendorf begins DJN by noting the relative inattention to moral
entities as such in comparison to the much-studied objects of the
physical sciences, even though “it greatly behooves man to know
the nature of such entities, which he has received the faculty to
produce, and whose power deeply suffuses itself throughout his
life” (I.1.1; Pufendorf 1994a, p. 99). He calls them
“modes” – in accord with their dependence on
self-subsistent entities (cf. Forde 2011, on Lockean “mixed
modes”) – and says that they are invented
(inventis) by reflective beings who, by comparing things,
form certain notions “superadded” to or
“imposed” on the world in order to direct or temper free
and voluntary human acts. (DJN I.1.2–3) Some moral entities are
said to “flow naturally from things themselves, as it were,
while others are superadded to physical things … by an
intelligent power” (DJN I.1.3; Pufendorf 1994a, p. 100). This is
a relative distinction within Pufendorf’s general voluntarist
framework, where God is thought to impose a basic normative dimension
on the world (conjointly and compatibly with its creation), but where
humans in fact devise the (further) distinctions that regulate their
lives together – both in philosophizing about these and by
enacting concrete practices and institutions to regulate
them. Accordingly, one might describe the former as foundational or
structural categories, and the latter as subsidiary, instrumental, or
discretionary tools of analysis. All moral entities, however, of
whatever type, depend for their existence on the will of intelligent
beings who externally assign normative, action-directing significance
to things intrinsically lacking this, but nonetheless somehow
compatible with or receptive to it.

There are four types of moral entities, says Pufendorf, analogous to
categories applied to physical things: (1) states or conditions
(status), (2) substances (specifically, persons), and modes
in a more specific sense – namely, (3) moral qualities
(affective/effective modes) and (4) moral quantities (estimative
modes). As in the physical realm, moral ‘states’ designate
a kind of (moral-legal) space in which persons (like bodies) operate
and orient themselves; they are sub-posed by the latter even though
they also, in a sense, depend on them for their existence. Pufendorf
distinguishes two such states, natural and adventitious, the former
referring to the natural state occupied by all humans as such (thus,
the “state of humanity”), and the latter to the special
conditions, institutions, or standing (e.g., commercial, marital,
civil) that differentially accompany it, in being created by and
imposed on particular sorts of persons. Personhood or moral
substantiality refers in turn to the various roles or agencies that
humans play or assume in such contexts, either simply as individuals,
or as composites or collectives, and either on their own behalf or for
others (e.g., sovereigns, ambassadors). Since we typically enact
multiple, overlapping moral personae, it is possible for these to
conflict, not only in the case of individuals but also collectives
like economic associations, religious groups, and political entities
like states, empires, or confederations. It is therefore important to
articulate the respective obligations and rights of (different kinds
of) persons, and to assess and rank them in terms of their relative
moral importance.

Such distinctions require the use of moral qualities and quantities,
which are respectively affective and estimative modes. The latter
involve the valuation of persons, things, or actions in terms of their
social status or esteem, their price (economic value), or their desert
(as in punishment and reward) – all of which are inexact,
comparative, and subject to alteration or adjustment (i.e., moral
imposition is an ongoing process). Moral qualities, in turn, affect
(have an effect on) persons and are either formal (e.g., titles) or
operative, with the latter subdivided into passive and active
varieties. Passive operative qualities enable someone “rightly
to have, suffer, admit, or receive something” (DJN I.1.20),
while active operative qualities are those by which we can morally
affect or move others, as it were. (See Auer 2008, for an association
with Hohfeld.) They are divided into the more familiar notions of
power/authority (potestas), obligation (obligatio),
and right (ius) – which constitute the moral dynamics of
social life. All such notions or entities, it is important to keep in
mind, are imposed or assigned rather than given or found; the scheme
is fundamentally ‘positivistic’.

The inherited term ‘right’ (ius) is ambiguous,
says Pufendorf, and it sometimes stands for law (lex). Though
it may also be classed as a passive moral quality (as in allowing
someone rightly [recte] to receive things), it is active
insofar as it permits us to command persons and possess things. It is
similar, in the latter respect, to power or authority
(potestas), which is subdivided into four types depending on
whether it is wielded over persons or things – either one’s own or
those of others. Authority over one’s own person and actions is
freedom (libertas), and over those of others sovereignty
(imperium); moral power over one’s own things is ownership or
dominion (dominium), and over those of others lordship
(servitus). Each kind of power may be acquired, lost, or held
in certain ways: for example, the efficacy or strength of authority
may be ‘perfect’ (complete, exceptionless, enforceable) or
‘imperfect’ (limited, flexible, merely hortatory or
desirable), as may the force of rights; and the rest of DJN is
essentially an account of how this occurs in the different areas
(spaces, or states) of life. The influence of Pufendorf’s distinctions
and their exhaustive application to particular life sectors was
enormous, creating the basic scaffolding of modern moral
discourse. (See Hruschka [2015 et alia].)

Obligation refers to the “moral necessity” at work in such
relationships, by which one is “bound” to do, admit, or
suffer something (DJN I.1.21), and thus it applies to all spheres
where authority, right, or other forms of moral normativity
operate. Pufendorf clarifies obligation at DJN I.6, in his discussion
of law, sanction, and the claims of lawgivers. Law differs, he says
there (referring to Hobbes, On the Citizen [De cive
{1642}] 14.1), from counsel, agreement, and right alike, because by it
an obligation is “introduced into a man’s mind by a superior,
that is by someone who not only has the strength to threaten some evil
against those who resist him, but also legitimate reasons allowing him
to demand that our freedom be restricted at his discretion.”
(DJN I.6.9; Pufendorf 1994a, p.123) That is, obligation has a dual
aspect involving both reason and strength, neither of which can
separately give rise to it: the former generates reverence or respect
in those who are (or take themselves to be) obligated, and the latter
fear. Both are needed, since reverence without fear does not explain
the compellingness of obligation, while fear without reverence does
not explain its legitimacy. (DJN III.4.6) This analysis applies to
obligation under both divine and human law, and in the former case,
especially, it raises the question of whether voluntarism or
intellectualism, or an amalgam, offers a more adequate account of
moral duty. The matter has been much debated, starting with Leibniz’s
critique (1706; Leibniz 1972) and Barbeyrac’s defense (1718; Pufendorf
2003) of Pufendorf (see Schneewind 1996a; Hunter 2004; Lipscomb 2005;
Haakonssen 1998; Grunert 2000), and still in recent discussions (see
section 5.3 below) of normativity referring back to those earlier
treatments. (Darwall 2012, Irwin 2011a–b, Pink 2009)

More so than Grotius, Pufendorf clearly distinguished natural and
moral goods (DJN I.2.6), maintaining that the former are morally
indifferent even if generally agreed upon by humans. (DJN I.4.4,
II.3.4) Thus, since moral norms are not directly linked to the
intrinsic natures or purposes of things, or to the outcomes of
actions, he was neither a teleologist nor a consequentialist in ethics
(in the sense of maintaining an obligation to achieve or realize
natural ‘goods’ or ‘the good’, which are assumed already to be morally
compelling). However, the so-called natural goodness or evil of
things, their ability to benefit or harm us, provide the rationale for
the imposition of moral entitites by intelligent beings from which
obligation springs. That is, they have (especially in the case of
natural goods) a sort of evidentiary function, explaining why the
obliger wills such-and-such, and why the obligee wills (or might be
motivated to) its acceptance. Thus, when discussing moral persons
Pufendorf says that the impositions which produce that rank or status
should have a positive effect (solidus effectus) on humankind
and not be made frivolously, as when Caligula declared his horse a
senator, when the ancient Romans deified their emperors, and when
papists, still, declare saints by a similar sort of post-mortem
canonization – all with normative impact. (DJN I.1.15)
Similarly, when explaining the legitimating aspect of commands or
obligations (human or divine), or that in them which evokes our
reverence or respect, Pufendorf stresses the commanding party’s
ability and willingness to benefit (or his having done so) those on
whom the obligation lies. (DJN I.6.12, DO I.5) In sum, while natural
good and evil are not the source of obligation per se, and moral
necessity is not hypothetical in that sense, they do explain why there
is such a thing as obligation at all, or what the point of it
is. Moreover, since what benefits or harms humans is known through
experience, empirical investigation, and knowledge of the past
(history), these operate as heuristics for determining our obligations
and explain why, in some cases, there may be disagreement about
them. Of course, such differences do not concern whether moral
commands as such formally obligate or not, but whether specific
actions are in fact morally commanded. That at least some of them are
(Pufendorf also allowed for indifferent actions), and that in
particular moral spaces or contexts we can usually determine which
ones, is a basic assumption of Pufendorf’s theory.

The concept of a natural state is so important to Pufendorf’s theory
that he considered political tracts which ignore it “gravely
defective” (Pufendorf 1990, p. 110). The idea is discussed in no
less than five of his works (EJU, DJN, DO, Dissertationes,
and Eris Scandica), which basically agree on its
characterization and distinctions. (Seidler 1990, Fetscher 1960) DJN
alone contains two versions: one (II.2) to establish the general need
for law and moral authority, and the other (VII.1) to justify civil
power or political sovereignty (imperium). These two
treatments share a common conception of legal obligation as justified
imposition by a beneficent superior with access to sanctions. This
does not make them redundant, however, even if the political
institutions created to eliminate the second, pre-civil state of
nature are enjoined by same natural law that also commands (or
induces) humans to leave their prior, pre-cultural (and bestial)
states. Civil sovereignty and its mechanisms are needed precisely
because the cooperative institutions (e.g., language, contract,
property, marriage, family, household) that lift humans out of their
previous, natural condition eventually create analogous coordination
problems on another level. Indeed, since similar difficulties arise
among civil states themselves, in an international state of nature,
there is need for yet another solution at that level. In sum,
Pufendorf’s conceptions of morality, politics, and international law
are set against analogous natural states at each level; this
facilitates the respective analyses, though the remaining differences
also prevent their standardization.

The first DJN treatment of the natural state is preceded by a
chapter (II.1) on the concrete importance of law. This discussion
provides a bridge between the conceptual analysis of law and
obligation, in Book I, and the following chapter (II.2) on the natural
state, which leads in turn to the derivation of the natural law in DJN
II.3. In it, Pufendorf presents a moral anthropology suggesting what
kinds of moral entities, or what obligations and laws, should be
imposed in view of “the natural inclinations and pursuits of us
mortals” (DJN II.1.6; Pufendorf 1994a, p. 138). These reveal
– especially in comparison to beasts – that humans’
greater freedom would actually be disadvantageous to them without
further regulation; that is, randomized freedom, or license, is
self-defeating. The argument is expectably framed by Pufendorf’s
general assumption that such counterproductivity would violate the
divine intention of having human actions display a certain
“order, decorum, or beauty” (DJN II.1.5; Pufendorf 1994a,
p. 138); however, it is solidly based as well on a description of
observable human tendencies and behaviors. The latter show humans to
be weak, diverse, and sometimes perverse: not only are they anxious,
ambitious, envious, superstitious, resentful, vain, vindictive, and
the like; but they often disagree with one another as well, even
themselves; and yet (unlike other living things) they are incapable of
securing their basic needs without the aid of creatures like
themselves. For mutual assistance to be possible, however, and to
avoid the difficulties continually generated by the traits above,
human action must be constrained by laws of freedom, as it
were. Without these, humans would sink below the level of brutes,
whose welfare is non-voluntarily secured by physical laws, and they
would remain at liberty only to disrupt and destroy one another. This
sort of inconsistency in human nature was – on religious,
rational, prudential, and it seems aesthetic grounds –
unacceptable to Pufendorf.

The natural state is a theoretical mechanism for further articulating
these considerations. A relative notion, it appears in three distinct
but overlapping versions, the third of which is specially elaborated
by the DJN VII.1 account mentioned above. Each version involves a
polarity or implied contrast: the natural state toward God (ad
Deum), that in regard to oneself (in se), and that
toward other human beings (ad alios homines). The first of
these designates the human condition as such, conceived negatively as
a “state of humanity” in contrast to both the amoral state
of beasts but also “toward [or against] God.” Humans
emerge from it – using their de facto traits and
capacities (which Pufendorf associates with “soul”)
– by moralizing themselves through social interaction, gradually
articulating a normative sphere of rights and duties only formally
imposed by their creator. The second natural state, with respect to
oneself (in se), designates the basic helplessness of
solitary humans and their almost inevitable lapse into an
uncultivated, bestial life without mutual assistance. Classical
accounts of this state depict individual humans as frustrated in their
most basic needs and desires, and as incapable of the refinement
needed to develop their distinctive faculties and exercise their
freedom. Human interaction can sometimes and to some extent eliminate
the natural state in this sense – a process facilitated by their
prior, and concurrent, emergence from the mere state of humanity. As
the third natural state shows, however, humans may also threaten,
endanger, or interfere with one another unless their freedom is
effectively restrained by law. Here law means more than the
self-interpreted moral law already operative in the first two states
of nature (which, pace Hobbes, are not entirely lawless or amoral);
rather it refers to civil law which must be imposed by a political
superior with both the authority and the effective power to
command. Hence this natural state is best described as a pre-civil
state, in contrast to the pre-cultural and merely human states. Note:
in none of the three states does ‘natural’ function
normatively in the sense of a model or ideal to be realized, as in
some other forms of natural law theory. Instead, norms emerge as one
leaves such natural conditions.

As already suggested, the three conditions overlap. Thus, imperfect
humans always remain (albeit tenuously) in the initial state of (mere)
humanity (DJN II.2.9–10), even when the other two natural states
have been partially sublated by culture and politics; for they are
always subject to, and somehow responsible for, the norms deriving
from divine imposition or, alternatively, required by and for human
beings as such. That is, as neither beasts nor gods, they lack the
automatism of the former and the spontaneous goodness of the latter,
and always carry a fallible burden of judgment, as it were. The latter
two states may coincide as well, though usually incompletely, in that
humans may exit a pre-cultural state of need while still in a
pre-civil state of insecurity, or they may enjoy the security of a
civil state while relatively deprived of cultural goods. As well, even
though need satisfaction and cultural development typically occur
before and apart from political order, in cities as opposed to states,
the latter sometimes seem a precondition of the former processes
– as Pufendorf knew well from the circumstances of the Thirty
Years War.

The pre-cultural and pre-civil states of nature especially (i.e.,
those conditions respectively lacking in these respects) are further
distinguished into full or perfect, and partial or limited
versions. The former is purely mythical or hypothetical in that no
humans can exist without their fellows. Complete non-cooperation or
complete hostility are simply impossible, since no one would survive,
and the only reason to consider such scenarios is as heuristic devices
highlighting the conditions that humans actually inhabit. (Behme
2009a) Indeed, as Rousseau would iterate in his own way, extreme
versions of the natural state are mere extrapolations from the more
limited, or mixed, conditions found in actual human history and
experience – as when rival families, clans, states, or
(occasionally) formerly cultivated and civil-ized individuals (e.g.,
Crusoe), are temporarily left to their own devices. Much of
Pufendorf’s discussion on the topic takes place through critical
interaction with Grotius, Hobbes, and Spinoza, whose comments on the
natural state he appropriates, alters, or rejects. The paradoxical
upshot of his examination is that humans as such never were, are, or
will be in a pure, full, or perfect natural state, since it would be a
completely barbarous, bellicose, and thus deadly condition. Thus far,
Hobbes was correct. However, as Pufendorf says in rhetorical
opposition to him, Hobbes rather overstated the case; for the natural
state is actually a state of ‘peace’ (DJN II.2.7) –
albeit an imperfect, unstable, and insecure peace (DJN
II.2.12). Accordingly, humans cannot ever – at least in this
life – entirely leave the natural state (in all three senses)
behind, as they are always imperfectly socialized, (only) partially
cultivated, and incompletely or inadequately civil-ized
(politic-ized). This explains their lifelong subjection to moral law
and obligation (however understood), and their need – Pufendorf
thought – for some sort of civil subjugation. That is, insofar
as they manage to survive and thrive at all, they do so through
incompletely realized forms of social cooperation that must (in a
variety of ways) be constantly maintained and improved.

Accordingly, “the most common rule [regula]” of
actions, called the right (ius) or law (lex) of
nature, enjoins that humans “must, inasmuch as [they] can,
cultivate and maintain toward others a peaceable sociality that is
consistent with the native character and end of humankind in
general” (DJN II.3. 1 and 15; Pufendorf 1994a, pp. 148, 152).
This law does not rest on an intrinsic morality of actions, an
absolute value of persons, on common agreement among humans, or even
on the long-term utility that generally follows compliance with its
injunctions (DJN II.3.4, 7–8,10) – though the latter two are
not denied. Rather, it appeals to a divine superior who is taken to
enjoin that which right reason itself can discover to be in humans’
interest. (DJN II.3.19) That is, while the law’s content or practical
purposiveness is articulated by right reason observing “man’s
nature, condition, and inclinations, … other things external to
man, especially those capable of benefitting or harming him in some
way[,] … and the kinds of assistance and restraint he
needs” (DJN II.3.14; Pufendorf 1994a, p. 151), its normative
force as law depends formally on the will of a super-human authority
with the power of sanction. (DJN II.3.19–20) Pufendorf grants
that the latter relationship remains “somewhat obscure”
for those who follow the light of reason alone, since natural
sanctions are imperfect and supernatural sanctions out of play. (DJN
II.3.21, III.4.6) However, the voluntarist problem of arbitrariness is
avoided by positing (Pufendorf thinks proving, through natural
theology [DO I.4]) divine benevolence (providence) and consistency:
human nature and the law regulating it are willed together by God for
human benefit. (DJN II.3.4–5) (More agnostically, one might
refer to the benignity of things, as it were, the starting assumption
that, at the least, the world is not decidedly against us.) And that
supposition in turn is supported by the evidence of actual experience
(both historical and contemporary), which is in any case the only way
to discern and understand the law’s requirements. (DJN II.3.12) In
short, God is not perverse, and the world not entirely inhospitable to
morality and human welfare.

Pufendorf acknowledges the fundamental reality of self-love and
the possibility of reading the natural law as a merely instrumental
rule. However, he denies that self-love is the only human motive or
necessarily in conflict with other motives, and argues that in fact
its aims can be fully or really achieved only through the natural law;
this does command humans to love themselves, albeit in a mitigated,
restrained, and thus more successful way. (DJN II.3.14 and 18) That
is, humans are not totally selfish or totally altruistic, but
partially both. Hence the natural law does not forbid the pursuit of
self-interest but merely regulates it, enjoining both the care of self
and the care of others that humans already seek (in a limited and
inadequate fashion). If human nature tended toward one or other
extreme, the law’s injunctions would be either impossible or
unnecessary (i.e., pointless); it is precisely humans’ medial nature,
their motivationally mixed constitution, that accounts for the law’s
normative force – in both its rational (legitimate reasons) and
sanctional (strength) aspects. The argument certainly requires its
voluntarist (and theistic) premise, but it relies as much on the
compatible (and, supposedly, confirmatory) deliverances of general
human experience. In practice, given the stakes involved according to
either interpretation, it often may not matter which is
emphasized. And this was undoubtedly why (beside its non-theological
foundation) Pufendorf’s more perceptive religious critics resisted it
and often accused him of Hobbism, and why in turn his secular
adherents were not alienated by the deity lingering in the
background.

Toward the end of his discussion of the natural law’s main principle,
Pufendorf joins Hobbes in subsuming international (ius
gentium) under natural law (DJN II.3.23) – which is critical
for understanding both – and makes some distinctions that shape
the rest of the work. (Reibstein 1955, Seidler 2015) Like Grotius, he
contrasts “matters which the natural law disposes by direct
precept or prohibition from those that reason has persuaded men
to institute on account of sociality, or that may be undertaken by
virtue of a license flowing directly from these institutions – in
which case they are said to have a reductive relation to the
natural law” (DJN II.3.22; Pufendorf 1994a, p. 156; emphasis
added). More formatively, he divides the law’s injunctions –
loosely reflecting the divisions of the natural state – into those
toward God (adversus Deum), toward ourselves (adversus
seipsum), and toward other humans (adversus alios
homines). The first category is treated separately in the
pedagogically oriented DO ( I.4), written while Pufendorf was fighting
charges of atheism in Lund. However, DJN (II.4.3–4, III.4.4)
folds it into the second group, particularly the law’s (i.e., God’s)
command that we cultivate our minds by developing appropriate beliefs
about God through careful consideration of the supposedly convincing
arguments of natural theology – a strategy that recalls the
difficulties noted above. The third category’s precepts regarding
other humans are divided into absolute and hypothetical injunctions,
the former obligating all men and women as such, whatever their
status, and the latter – as in the direct/reductive distinction
above – presupposing certain states or institutions introduced by
them. (DJN II.3.24) Hypothetical injunctions are also distinguished
from positive civil laws that may appeal to them for justification,
even if based on particular states’ advantage or specific legislators’
volitions. The three most important human institutions governed by
hypothetical laws of nature are speech, dominion over things
(property) and price (the valuation of things), and human sovereignty
(including the civil state) – the subjects of DJN IV–V and
VI–VIII. Book II concludes with three more chapters treating the
various duties toward ourselves (II.4), the right and limits of
self-defense (II.5), and the right of necessity (II.6).

Before turning to various categories of hypothetical duties in Book
III, Pufendorf examines several absolute requirements toward other
humans. The first is the prime natural law directive – also found
in Grotius and Hobbes – without which social life could not exist:
that no one should injure another and, if they have, that reparation
should be made. (DJN III.1) Second, since injury can be done to others
not only by damaging their bodies or things, but also their
self-esteem, humans must show mutual respect and treat one another as
natural equals: for “one cannot lead a social life with someone
by whom one is not esteemed at least as a man, …” (DJN
III.2.1; Pufendorf 1994a, p. 159). The basis of this requirement is not
human nature regarded metaphysically (or transcendentally) as an
absolute value, but a so-called equality of right or law
(ius) consisting merely of our joint obligation (per natural
law) to cultivate a social life. (DJN III.2.2; (Fiorillo 2013a,
Saastamoinen 2010, Haakonssen 2011) Human moral equality so conceived
also leads Pufendorf to reject the notion of natural slavery, even
though he allows its compatibility with certain kinds of contractual
subjection in both pre-civil and civil society. (DJN III.2.8–9)
Third, beside observing the minimalist requirements not to injure or
insult others, Pufendorf notes, one must also seek to benefit them,
“so that I am glad that others who share my nature also live
upon this earth” (DJN III.3.1; Pufendorf 1994a, p. 165). This
introduces the important distinction between perfect and imperfect
duties, the latter consisting of so-called duties of humanity which,
though owed in the same sense as perfect duties, cannot be
compelled. There are a number of interesting discussions here,
addressing the right of passage “for legitimate reasons”
(justas causas, DJN III.3.5), the duty of hospitality, and
the right of immigration – some of which recur in the fuller
treatment of international law at the end of DJN VIII. Duties of
humanity often depend on special circumstances. Thus, Pufendorf could
consistently approve of Frederick William’s liberal (and self-serving)
pro-Huguenot immigration policy in Brandenburg while supporting
Charles XI’s tighter restrictions in Sweden. (Pufendorf 1995e,
pp. 472, 505; Pufendorf 2002c, §54, pp. 118–21) Moreover,
in the immediate context, he disagrees with Vitoria (DJN III.3.9) by
limiting the so-called right of commerce, including territorial access
for such purposes, especially as it was used by Europeans in their
conquest of America. (Cavallar 2002, 2008; Hunter 2007a)

Since imperfect duties of humanity do not suffice for maintaining
social relations, particularly those involving precise mutual
expectations, Pufendorf introduces (DJN III.4) another class of
absolute duties arising from pacts among individuals. The natural law
stipulates no specifics here but merely commands that we enter into
some such consensual arrangements, since without them sociality would
be hampered and humans remain in the natural state. Pact-generated
obligations are both adventitious, or based upon some antecedent human
deed responding to circumstance, and perfect in the sense of specific
and compellable. They arise from either unilateral promises or
bilateral agreements, and they create perfect rights (i.e., justified
expectations of exact performance) in others. (DJN I.7.7) It appears
here that Pufendorf is an obligation theorist in that rights derive
from obligations (DJN III.5.1; cf. VIII.3.5), yet there are also
rights without corresponding obligations; that is, correlativity
exists, but incompletely. (Mautner 1991, 1989) He also rejects once
more Hobbes’s notion of a right to all things and maintains that
rights claims to natural objects must rest, if they are to have
normative force, on the express or tacit consent of others (DJN
III.5.2–3); that is, they arise out of social interaction and
are not presupposed by it. Given its importance for the development of
human social life, five more chapters are devoted to the topic of
promises and pacts: on their nature, subject-matter, types, and
conditionality, as well as the sorts of individual and collective
agents capable of generating consent-based obligations by promising or
agreeing with one another. The discussion as a whole is fundamental to
the hypothetical laws of nature articulated in the rest of the work,
in the context of various consensually created adventitious human
institutions.

Since humans’ emergence from the pre-cultural and pre-civil states of
nature is neither strictly concomitant or parallel, nor sequential,
the development of DJN after Book III cannot be strictly continuous in
either a topical or historical sense. Rather, it falls into two
partially overlapping sectors. Books IV–V deal with human
efforts to leave the natural state of need (indigentia),
while Books VI–VIII address the problem of security created by
weakness (imbecillitas). Both require the creation of new,
complex, and formally organized kinds of human cooperation that
address both the growing diversity and inconsistency of human desires,
and the increase in human numbers.

Fundamental to both developments, however, is the institution of human
speech and the rules that make it effective, or possible. (DJN IV.1;
Hochstrasser 2000) For without speech in the sense of symbolic
communication human sociality would remain at a primitive and
unsustainable level, in that the terms of human cooperation could not
be articulated and agreed upon. Conversely – and hinting at the
general providentialism that Pufendorf substitutes for traditional
metaphysical teleology – speech, or the communication of thought
to others via sound, would be “of hardly any use” without
a social life. (DJN IV.1.1) Unlike natural signs or associations
(e.g., dawn, smoke, groans), speech is an artificial construct of
humans over time: learned rather than congenital, and arbitrary or
accidental instead of naturally uniform, it is a clear instance of the
willful imposition of moral entities upon the world so as to give rise
to new obligations. (DJN IV.1.4–5) Its utility depends upon
consent (tacit or express) and on the concomitant requirements of
consistency and veracity, which are both instrumentally
and – insofar as humans are obligated to be social – morally
necessary. However, though humans are bound by the general conventions
of language and by the requirement of not lying to one another, they
retain a certain flexibility of action based on others’ varying right
to know one’s thoughts, and the actual consequences of such
revelations. Thus Pufendorf distinguishes between lies
(mendacia) and untruths (falsiloquia) and also
allows for noninjurious deceptions. (DJN IV.1.9) This proviso applies
not only to everyday life and its “harmless arts of simulation
and dissimulation,” but also to the realm of politics and
international relations, where total candor or naivete may be
counterproductive and defeat the injunctions of sociality. (DJN
IV.1.17; Martin 2009) Pufendorf returns to it repeatedly in discussing
the duties of (esp. contemporary) historians. (Seidler 1997,
Piirimäe 2008)

It is clear in this as well as other discussions how Pufendorf’s
anthropological and social realism allows or actually requires a
certain flexibility in articulating context-specific obligations of
the natural law, even or especially within the particular human
institutions created to enact sociality. It is because of this
flexibility and consequent slipperiness of language that he goes on to
treat of oaths (DJN IV.2) which, presuming “human diffidence,
infidelity, ignorance, and impotence” (DJN IV.2.2), are a
special means for assuring others (through associated divine or civil
sanctions) of the reliability of our speech acts and the promises and
pacts that rest thereon. Of course, since oaths themselves involve
presumptions and tacit conditions arising from the nature of
particular cases (DJN IV.2.14), they too may require further
regulation. Thus, like other human institutions based on pacts, the
rules of speech both antedate civil sovereignty but come eventually to
depend on it in certain ways as well.

A fundamental use of speech is to regulate humans’ use of external
things by appeal to the right of appropriation or dominion. The latter
rests on things’ necessity or utility for humans, and their presumed
(and divinely intended) availability for man’s use because of these
features. (DJN IV.3.1–3) Property designates a moral quality
imposed on things, and it has a moral effect on other humans rather
than (or beside) a physical impact on the things or animals
owned. (DJN IV.4.1) That is, it is a social relationship among humans
(thus, solitary Adam’s relation to things was not ownership per se,
and could not be transmitted) based on express or tacit agreements
that may vary according to circumstances, so long as the ends of human
sociality are served. (DJN IV.4.4) Before or without such agreements,
worldly objects are in a state of negative community, meaning that
they belong to no one in particular but lie open for anyone to use as
needed. (DJN IV.4.2–3, 4.13)

While Pufendorf acknowledges a kind of primitive community within
family units, under the aegis of the father, he distinguishes this
from positive communion in the sense of common ownership. (Buckle
1991) Both this and private dominion, or property properly speaking,
arise gradually with the proliferation and dispersion of family units,
as humans and their needs multiply. (DJN IV.4.12) For under such
conditions it becomes necessary to distinguish mine from thine through
certain exclusionary conventions, if quarrels are to be
avoided. Typically (but optionally), humans agree to a right of first
occupancy or direct use, limited by the proviso of actual utility and
the ability to defend what is occupied (DJN IV.6.3) – though this
does not suffice for ownership without consent. Some things like the
open ocean may (or can) not be owned, and so peaceful navigation
thereon “belongs to everyone and is free.” However, other
kinds of exclusive restrictions, such as unequal trade relationships
among nations, are permitted, and “that vaunted freedom of trade
does not prevent a state from favoring its own citizens over
outsiders” (DJN IV.5.9–10). Also, since property is a
moral relationship rather than a physical quality, the same things may
be subject to different types of overlapping ownership. (DJN IV.4.2)
Dominion need not be exclusive, and humans may grant others a perfect
or imperfect right over their possessions. Indeed, they may be
obligated to do so. (DJN IV.8)

Since owned objects serve different uses and are not equally
valued by everyone, their exchange requires a common measure of
comparison to determine their so-called moral quantity, or price. (DJN
V.1.1–2) Price is either ordinary or eminent, the latter determined by
money as an independent, or objective, unit of value. Money is
explicitly created to serve the ends of exchange among both
individuals and states, and without it commercial pacts, or contracts,
regarding both goods and services are inconceivable. (DJN V.2.4) While
civil rulers have the authority to regulate property relationships in
their realms (particularly specific forms of acquisition like hunting
and fishing), and trade with outsiders, they are less free to
determine the relative price of things since such arbitrariness would
disrupt economic exchange, especially interstate commerce. (DJN
IV.6.5; V.1.14) In general, sovereign determinations are less apt or
useful in pre- or non-civil institutions that relieve human need, than
in regard to those that insure human security – if these can be
distinguished. Nonetheless, economic tools like contracts may need a
civil sanction to insure their reliability and thus efficacy, and
rulers may regulate property insofar as it affects the state’s basic
security interests and welfare – not only by taxation and eminent
domain but also through controls on foreign trade and on the growth of
luxury (e.g., sumptuary laws), whereby the state’s economic strength
and independence are affected. (DJN VII.4.7, VIII.5; Saeter 1996,
Gaertner 2005, Young 2008, Skinner 1995)

Like physical bodies, the moral body of the state is substantively
composed of lesser members, particularly the simple and thus primary
associations (collegia) of marriage, family, and
household. (DJN VI.1.1) In their reproductive, rearing, and economic
functions, these basic societies mainly address the problem of human
want or need, though they also offer a minimal level of
security. Their existence shows that social cooperation is not
suddenly imposed on isolated human beings with the creation of states,
but that the latter is an additional form of association introduced to
protect and maintain already existing social units. Despite the
natural inclinations that induce individuals to form or enter them,
these proto-civil arrangements are, like states, based on agreements,
and they exhibit authority relations more or less analogous to civil
sovereignty. (DJN VI.2.11) The latter becomes necessary only when
pre-civil societies increase in size, number, and complexity to the
point where their interactions become dysfunctional and security
problems unmanageable. As in the case of other moral entities that are
superimposed on one another, states do not replace pre-civil societies
but only protect, order, and – under certain
conditions – utilize them. At the same time, especially in the
case of other types of sub-state associations such as churches, they
may also liberate individuals from them (by divorcing civil from
religious authority, and allowing religious diversity in the
state). (Seidler 2002).

4.1.1 Marriage

Since it regulates reproduction, without which human society would
cease to exist, the institution of marriage is “the foundation
of social life” (DJN VI.1.7; Dufour 1972, Ehrle 1952). Humans
are obligated to enter it, though only in a general way that
presupposes capacity, opportunity, and other facilitating
conditions. Despite being commanded by God – like other natural
law obligations – its immediate origins lie in each instance in a
consensual pact between basically equal partners. (DJN VI.1.12) This
holds even where a woman’s (express or tacit) consent – like terms
of captivity in general – follows upon (a just) war. (DJN VI.1.9,
1.12; VI.3.5–6) Though its end differs from that of the state
(reproduction vs. security), the marital unification of wills may
establish a hierarchical, quasi-sovereignty relationship between
spouses, one of whom agrees to submit to the other’s authority; on the
other hand, marriage may have the character of an “unequal
confederation,” which also requires diverse but mutual
performance (i.e., command and obedience; DJN VI.1.11). What is
impermissible in both cases and institutions, however, because of its
supposed dysfunctionality for governance, is a divided command or two
heads.

This forces a choice upon Pufendorf’s contractual egalitarianism,
which is tempered here by his material assumptions about the
“preeminence” of the husband’s sex, and about women’s
allegedly unreasonable demand for additional responsibilities. These
are not absolute pronouncements, however, but conclusions of the
“ruling prudence” that is the “pleasant sister of
natural law”; that is, they rest upon an empirical, pragmatic
assessment of spouses’ respective abilities and burdens. (DJN
VI.1.11,18) It is important to recall in this context the difference
between modern and medieval natural law, and that Pufendorf does not
conceive human nature in essentialist terms but rather generalizes
(rightly or wrongly) from experience. That is, apart from his personal
presuppositions, his is an empirical and not a metaphysical argument,
and this makes it both circumstantial and corrigible. To dismiss it
out of hand ironically risks reaffirming the very approach that he
rejected (in general), and to overlook the flexibility and liberatory
potential of his conception of natural law. (Drakopolou 2013)

Besides, Pufendorf reassures, in marriages and states alike,
sovereignty does not exclude the possibility of mutual affection, and
spouses do not command each other in all respects but only those that
serve the institution’s fundamental end. Thus, matters like the
disposition of a wife’s dowry and other assets depend on the
stipulations of the original marriage agreement (DJN VI.1.11), much
like the preliminary constraints imposed upon limited civil
sovereignty by a state’s fundamental laws. Pufendorf also extends his
analysis into the controversial subject of polygamy – which he
deemed rationally elusive and sometimes permissible (DJN
VI.1.16–18; Vogel 1991) – and into the topic of divorce,
where he qualifies Milton’s views on the subject (DJN VI.1.24;
Palladini 2001). These and other discussions are historically and
circumstantially embedded, which accounts for their considerable
length and detail, especially when compared with shorter treatments in
other early modern authors like Hobbes and Locke. Textual comparisons
with these can be useful and enlightening (Sreedhar 2014), especially
if historical and philosophical contexts are also kept in view
(Doyé 2012, Hull 1996, Buchholz 1988, Rinkens 1971, Dufour
1972).

4.1.2 Family

One human institution generates and qualifies another as the
parental role supervenes on that of marital partner. Here Pufendorf
follows Hobbes in holding that mere generation cannot ground parental
authority (just as place of birth alone cannot ground patriotism), and
that this depends instead on a tacit pact based on utility. (DJN
VI.2.2) Children supposedly assent to their subjection in order to
survive, and because otherwise the beneficial ends of parenthood,
which include the rearing, socializing, and civic education of
offspring, cannot be attained. Moreover, he concurs, though mothers
have primary authority over children in the state of nature where
parents are roughly equal, fathers typically acquire supremacy through
marriage pacts, which may be dictated by civil laws. (DJN
VI.2.4–5) As in the spousal relationship and for similar
reasons, parents cannot be equally authoritative or sovereign
vis-a-vis their children, but one or the other must prevail. Though
this is usually the male, Pufendorf excepts Amazons and contemporary
queens in whom the civil sovereignty reposes for dynastic reasons, and
whose husbands are not kings but mere “spouses of queens.”
(DJN VI.2.5) Also, like marital authority, parental power is limited
by the institution’s end and normally excludes the right of life and
death, and the ability to void grown children’s marriages. (DJN
VI.2.14) It ceases when children come of age and are emancipated,
though (as in the case of emigration, DJN VIII.11.3–4) it may be
extended beyond that point because of special circumstances, including
other pacts. Children always owe their parents imperfect duties of
equity and gratitude. (DJN VI.2.11)

4.1.3 Household

Herilic or master-slave relationships are similar to but stricter
than parental ties, and they have no natural expiration point. They
too are based on express or tacit pacts, with no natural basis beside
the qualifying suitability of some persons to rule and others to be
ruled (DJN VI.3.1–2) – which, alone, is insufficient to
justify them. Pufendorf conceives them as sovereignty- rather than as
property-relationships (DJN VI.3.7), strictly speaking, and regards
slaves not as things but as “perpetual mercenaries” (DJN
VI.3.4) who always retain an “intrinsic liberty of the
will” (DJN VI.3.10). Slavery (or servitude – the category
is wider or more diverse than often acknowledged) does not extinguish
the laws of humanity or erase all traces of humans’ original equality,
even though it is possible for them to bargain away (permanently)
their freedom to command themselves. (DJN VI.3.9) Even the offspring
of slaves may be retained in that status, especially when it has been
entered through war, although humanity (vs. right) favors their
liberation. States may regulate herilic relationships like marital and
parental ties, for appropriate reasons, even though they often do not
interfere. Slavery may be ended by manumission, banishment, a failure
to specify the status of slaves in one’s will,
and – notably – by putting a slave into chains (except for a
crime, or as punishment). In the last case and any other unjustified
deprivation of bodily freedom, a slave is released from his initial,
pact-based obligation, which depends on reciprocity: “For there
is no pact unless contractors trust each other, and faith cannot be
violated where it does not exist.” That is, physical bonds
replace or sublate moral ones, and in such a case a slave is free to
go (i.e., run away). (DJN VI.3.6, 3.11) These reasons are similar to
those why the civil bond between ruler and ruled may be broken.

Pufendorf’s political philosophy or doctrine of the state, including
the latter’s internal and external functions, is continuous and
consistent with his ethics; in fact, they are not really
distinct. Both rest on the same natural law foundation, namely the
sociality law which regulates not only pre-civil relations,
institutions, and societies but also the civil condition needed to
secure them. As thoroughly social beings who are incapable of living
alone, humans are subject to sociality’s requirements at all stages of
their lives, both temporally and organizationally, and the
establishment of political authority does not leave morality and its
obligations behind but rather facilitates and extends their reach. The
tempered realism of the political sphere is not a forced abandonment
of moral norms but an articulation of the natural law’s demands amid
the increasing complexities of collective human existence, including
its inevitable constraints, exclusions, and compromises. In
Pufendorf’s natural law theory, politics is a form of social
ethics.

4.2.1 The Origin of the State

Speaking generally (since the formation of individual states varies
greatly), the moral entity of ‘the state’ is self-imposed by humans at
the command of natural law when their pre-civil marital, parental, and
particularly herilic associations – as well as other pact-based
institutions such as property – become dysfunctional because of
multiplying conflicts that lead increasingly to the unjustified use of
force and, thus, reciprocal injury and insecurity. It is a defensive
and precautionary response to such emergent conditions, a kind of
cooperative scheme (conspiratio) or mutual protection
association created as needed against the growing threat posed by
other human beings. (DJN VII.2.1–2) Contra Aristotle, the state
is not a natural or ideal stage of human development emerging
spontaneously from humans’ desire to live together (DJN
VII.1.2–3), but an adventitious, willed self-help device broadly
enjoined by natural law in either or both a prudential (i.e.,
recommended by sound reason) or deontological (i.e., commanded by God)
sense. (DJN VII.3.2) It is not required to eliminate human need
(indigentia) in the pre-cultural natural state, since cities
and other forms of association usually suffice for that. (DJN VII.1.3
and 6; Brett 2011) Rather it secures these social arrangements and
their cultural gains in the context of increased human numbers,
relative scarcity and competition, growing disagreements, and the
ensuing insecurity that comes from the interaction of individually
weak and imperfectly social beings.

State formation is explicitly driven by fear, and there is ample
reference to human wickedness, self-concern, and a willingness to
injure in Pufendorf’s sketch of the pre-civil condition. (DJN
VII.1–2) Still, his comments are qualified even here, in
opposition to Hobbes, and they do not amount to an anthropological
claim about the exclusive selfishness of all human beings – which
is not needed for the argument. (DJN VII.1.5, 7–8) In fact, the
discussion of pre-civil conditions and institutions clearly tempers
such pessimism. For while those arrangements rely on formal promises
and pacts, they are also induced by and certainly compatible with
mutual affection, a desire for friendship, and the enjoyment of
conviviality. (DJN VII.1.5, 2.4; VIII.4.3, 6.2; II.2.7, 3.16) To be
sure, such means and motives become increasingly incapable of
maintaining them, as the complex feelings regulating smaller, simpler,
and more intimate human interactions evolve into a cruder and colder
psychology of scale among composite moral persons or groups. That is,
with the reduction of familiarity, predictability, and commonality of
purpose comes a sort of primitivizing of motives in the direction of
fear. Still, Pufendorf’s state is not built on a thick, essentialist,
or teleological (philosophical or theological) anthropology –
even of a negative sort – but on an empirical, historical, or
realistic assessment of actual human affairs. This means both that the
state’s minimalist function as a mutual protection agency may not be
controlled or overridden by other, substantive (e.g., religious,
ethical) ends, but also that, since fear does not necessarily
eliminate other human motives but only suppresses or distorts or
overrules them, the state as guarantor of mutual security may actually
allow these to function (again) in their proper (subordinate)
contexts.

4.2.2 Contractualism

Beside its sovereignty, what distinguishes Pufendorf’s state from
other pact-based institutions is its size (DJN VII.2.2) – that is,
its numbers must suffice for security in particular social and
historical circumstances – and, more importantly, its manner of
formation. Conceptually, it owes its origin to two agreements and an
intervening decree. (DJN VII.2.7–8) An initial contract of
association occurs when members of a multitude, or the would-be
citizens (in practice, family-fathers or patriarchs, who are the
primary or direct citizens: DJN VII.2.20, 5.12), agree with one
another to bond together for mutual security. This requires the
accession of all (full or formal) members of the resultant group, who
consent to it either absolutely or conditionally depending on whether
they agree individually to bind themselves to any form of state
selected by the majority, or only to a certain, preapproved form
satisfactory to themselves. In either case, the band (coetus)
thus constituted still lacks unity and has only “the rudiments
and beginnings of a state” (DJN VII.2.7; Pufendorf 1994a,
p. 212), although it suffices to prevent an immediate return to the
state of nature if the second pact is temporarily suspended, as during
an interregnum (DJN VII.7.6–7, VIII.11.1).

The second pact follows the selection (via the pragmatic expedient
of majority vote; see Pasquino 2010, Schwartzberg 2008) of the
specific form of state to be instituted (monarchy, aristocracy, or
democracy), and through it each citizen of the future state subjects
himself to the specific governing agent thereby established. It is
needed to prevent the random defection and individual exceptionalism
that threaten all pre-civil agreements (DJN VII.2.3, 10), including
the first contract. At this stage or level, the individual contractors
unite their wills through separate promises of obedience to a new
moral persona equipped with distinctive (i.e., not simply transferred)
rights and obligations, and capable of using their combined strength
to discipline, compel, and thus govern effectively. (DJN VII.2.5, 3.4,
8.5; cf. VI.1.12; Boucher 1998, Skinner 2002) Civil subjection is
analogous to herilic subjection or slavery, though more focused in
intent, more limited in scope, and – because of reciprocal
promises between governors and governed – potentially sublatable
in narrowly defined and (thinks Pufendorf) avoidable
circumstances. (DJN VII.3.1, 2.10; Seidler 1996) Moreover, in
combining a title to command with the strength to sanction or compel,
it also recalls the general structure and rationale of the moral
obligation that enjoins humans to constitute it in the first
place. (Cf. DJN VII.3.1, 2.13; I.6.9, 6.12; and Section 3.2 above)

4.2.3 Sovereignty

Like Bodin and Hobbes, Pufendorf identified sovereignty
(imperium) as the “vivifying and sustaining soul”
of the state. It is a new moral quality that emerges from the
respective commitments of rulers and ruled, consisting of the former’s
right to command and the latter’s duty to obey. (DJN VII.3.1–2:
Pufendorf 1994a, pp. 217–18; VII.4.12; Holland 2012) Like other
souls, as it were, sovereignty comes from God (as author of the
natural law), though only indirectly in this case, or through the
instrumentality of reasoning human beings. Thus, throughout Book VII
of DJN Pufendorf rejects the arguments of J. F. Horn (Politicorum
pars architectonica de civitate [1664]), the German
Filmer. Natural law bestows sovereignty on no one form of government
or on specific individuals or groups; instead, such decisions are made
by human contractors in particular circumstances. It is always
required, however, that sovereignty be supreme in the sense that there
be no superior or equivalent powers within the state. Also,
sovereignty cannot be divided, since that would fragment the unity of
will that undergirds the state as an effective authority. (DJN
VII.4.11) Accordingly, all governing functions, including legislative,
judicial, penal, economic, and war-related powers must ultimately
reside in the same persona or agency. Otherwise (as in the Holy Roman
Empire whose political diseases Pufendorf diagnosed in The Present
State of Germany) the state would have two or more heads and, by
reproducing the conflicts of the pre-civil condition, would invite its
own destruction.

4.2.4 Forms of State

States where sovereignty is unified – whatever be their form
(monarchy, aristocracy, democracy) – are called regular, and those
where it is divided irregular. (DJN VII.5.2, 5.14–15)
Irregularity always weakens a state, but each form also has its own
difficulties and weaknesses. Pufendorf does not in principle prefer
one regular form over another: God is the author of free states
(democracies) and monarchies alike (DJN VII.5.5), and sovereignty or
majesty belongs equally to all states and not just to monarchies (DJN
VII.3.3). However, humans incline differently toward particular forms
of state (DJN VII.5.11), and it is up to them to decide which ones to
implement for themselves. (DJN VII.3.2) In fact, the choice appears to
be prudential in nature, since certain forms of state may require
specific human dispositions to function effectively (DJN VII.6.5), and
some forms may be more suited for particular settings. Thus, large
territories with scattered populations are better ruled as monarchies,
while smaller regions or city-states can be governed well as
democracies (DJN VII.5.22). More generally, monarchy may be more
efficient because of the simple logistics of human association. (DJN
VII.5.9) Beside such forms and conditions, each type of state is also
prone to other faults or illnesses peculiar to itself, which Pufendorf
distinguishes into “vices of men” and “vices of
status” (DJN VII.5.10). The former obtain, for instance, when
(in a monarchy) rulership goes to someone unqualified for that role,
and the latter when (in a democracy) citizens are too self-assertive
and unwilling to compromise. The fact remains that even though states
are a remedy for human weakness and imperfection, as human constructs
they always remain an imperfect one. (DJN VII.5.22)

This problem cannot be avoided or lessened by mixing forms of
state, a traditional expedient (Riklin 2006, Scattola 2009b, Zurbuchen
2009) that Pufendorf rejects because of the irregularities it
produces. For mixing yields either an entity that is no state at all,
because it is held together by a mere agreement (without subjection),
or one that approximates a system of independent states, else
something ‘monstrous’ in between. (DJN VII.5.12–13)
Pufendorf does allow, though, for a distinction between forms of state
and forms of administration. Thus, a monarch may utilize executive
mechanisms that are aristocratic or democratic in nature, and
similarly for other forms of state. (DJN VII.5.1, 5.13) The crucial
defining factor in each instance is the unity and locus of ultimate
authority, not how its commands are executed or policies
implemented. Such arrangements differ from so-called systems of
(sovereign) states, which themselves exhibit regular and irregular
forms depending on the way their collective authority is exercised. By
discussing them Pufendorf extends his analysis to the international
sphere. (DJN VII.5.17–21; see Seidler 2011)

4.2.5 Absolute and Limited Sovereignty

Contra Hobbes, Pufendorf allows that supreme sovereignty (summum
imperium) may be either absolute or limited. (DJN VII.6.7) The
former obtains where a sovereign accepts his (her, or its) authority
with no conditions attached, the latter where citizens’ submission
depends on the sovereign’s initial acceptance of certain terms, such
as an existing state’s fundamental laws. These can be violated by the
eventual sovereign, making his actions injurious or illegitimate (DJN
VII.8.2–4, 6.10), even though subjects are not
typically – except in extremis – in a position to
deny him obedience for this reason because it would undermine the
important end of sovereignty altogether. (DJN VII.8.5–6) Given
human imperfections, Pufendorf clearly favors limited sovereignty;
however, and for the same reasons, while he criticizes the abuse of
absolute sovereignty he also criticizes irrational fear thereof. (DJN
VII.6.8–13) Again, there is no universal recommendation but all
depends on what is needed in particular historical circumstances where
such choices present themselves.

4.2.6 State and Church

The state or sovereign necessarily controls all sub-state
collectives, including economic, political, and religious
associations, especially if they compete with it for citizens’
allegiance. (DJN VII.2.21–24) Though piety is a personal matter
between the deity and individual believers, its official mediation by
ecclesial entities or churches, which also direct and organize human
actions, has a worldly impact that may interfere with the state’s
functions (which are also divinely enjoined) – as Pufendorf argued
by reference to the history of Catholicism and the papacy’s role in
European affairs. (Pufendorf 1691b; 2013, ch. 12) Therefore,
sovereigns have the right (and obligation) to regulate religious
organizations, to examine beliefs, and even to foster an official
religion – though only to insure compatibility with political
order. (DJN VII.4.11, 9.4) In fact, like public schools (if they do
not merely perpetuate scholastic subtleties), religion may also aid
the process of civic formation – which is required because states
are adventitious moral entities devised by humans for a particular
purpose, and because (good) citizens are not born but made. (DJN
VII.1.3–4) However, since they are disparate institutions
regulating different moral personae (citizens, believers), neither
state nor church exists primarily to serve the other’s purposes. The
state’s general authority regarding religion, and its sovereignty over
all religious groups alike, also creates room for the toleration of
religious minorities and thus restrains destabilizing confessional
conflict. (Seidler 2002, Zurbuchen 2013, Lehmann 2013, Palladini 1997b)
Though Pufendorf had not yet arrived at Christian Thomasius’ notion of
a deconfessionalized state (Hunter 2007), his historical awareness of
religion’s impact on government, and its frequent contribution to
political factionalism, made him wary of independent religious
institutions and inclined to favor state oversight. In any case, since
they issue from the same warranting deity, he held that ultimately
true politics and true (religious) doctrine cannot conflict. (DJN
VII.4.8, 4.11)

4.2.7 Civil Law

Despite its natural law foundation, a state’s positive laws will only
partially overlap with natural law. That is, since its purpose is not
to make humans perfect but secure, only those natural laws without
which peace among citizens would be impossible should also become
civil laws. (DJN VIII.1.1, III.4.6) In fact, by focusing on the
requirements of human association rather than on personal formation,
the sociality principle makes Pufendorf a legal minimalist more
generally, so that even where the natural law is silent or indifferent
“civil laws should not sanction more things than conduce to the
good of the citizens [as such] and the state” (DJN VII.9.5;
Pufendorf 1994a, p. 242). Besides, and within this narrow focal area,
it also grants legislators considerable discretion or flexibility of
application. Thus, even though civil laws should not explicitly
contravene natural law, it is sometimes excusable if they redefine or
“overlook” (dissimulare) certain
practices – like theft, duelling, and tacitly accepted
cuckoldry – for which “the condition of the times and the
genius of a people” do not provide a current remedy. (DJN
VIII.1.3) Such practical adjustments are evident throughout
Pufendorf’s detailed discussions of state laws in DJN
VIII – regarding punishment, social status (esteem), property, and
war – which are strongly prudentialist, consequentialist, and
realist in character. They evince not a substantive moralism but the
same flexible ‘reason-of-state’ approach that also guides
his thinking about inter-state relations. Indeed, through their common
grounding in the sociality principle, natural, civil, and
international law are in continuity and in dialogue with one
another – though in a complex and sometimes untidy way. (DJN
II.3.23) That is, though as a broad divine injunction natural law is
presumed to be ultimately consistent, in practice (as specifically
interpreted by particular humans) it often appears less so; for its
demands must always be articulated in full view of not only human
psychology but also the concrete settings in which human action
occurs. (Thus, as in the case of immigration [section 3.5 above],
Pufendorf could condemn the 1640s English revolution, while approving
that in 1688. [See Seidler 2001.])

4.2.8 Punishment

This requirement is also evident in Pufendorf’s long discussion of the
sovereign’s right to punish. (DJN VIII.3, Hüning 2009b)
Punishment presupposes a superior, and so (in contrast to Locke) it
cannot occur in either the pre-civil or the international state of
nature. (DJN VIII.3.1–2, 3.7) Of course, both individuals and
states have a right to defend themselves or wage defensive (and, in
limited circumstances, preemptive) war, but neither of these is to be
construed as punishment strictly speaking. The latter is, instead, a
means of social control available only to sovereigns for the specific
purpose of restraint, deterrence, and reform. (DJN VIII.3.9) In their
hands, moreover, it is more future- than past-oriented, with the
latter being important only for the sake of the former: that is, one
should not pointlessly impose evil on someone, even if guilty, if the
deed cannot be undone or the damage repaired, for he remains after all
our conspecific or fellow human being (cognato). (DJN
VIII.3.8) Those who have injured another certainly owe a duty of
reparation, as well as assurances about future behavior, but they are
under no obligation to submit to punishment (DJN VIII.3.4; see end of
4.1.3 above), which is imposed for purely consequentialist
reasons. Joining Hobbes, Pufendorf dismisses revenge as a “vain
and unreasonable” motive (DJN VIII.3.8) for punishment, and he
also dismisses Selden’s “satisfaction, purgation, or
expiation” (DJN VIII.3.12) as unnecessary or meaningless
notions. Moreover, he holds that penalties are not “owed
to” or “deserved by” criminals, who are unlikely to
assert such a right. (DJN VIII.3.5, 3.15) Instead,a sovereign’s resort
to punishment should be guided by state interest (as, in the case of a
parent, by the interests of the family: DJN VIII.3.10), which also
determines the quantity and quality of punishment needed. (DJN
VIII.3.23–24) The latter should never be excessive but guided by
the actual advantages to be gained. (DJN VII.9.6–7) In some
cases, punishment may even be foregone altogether if the interest of
the state demands it. (DJN VIII.3.14, 16). This is because punishment
is an instance of neither distributive nor commutative (expletive)
justice, but a type of administrative sanction recommended by
“prudence … conjoined with the duty to rule
others” (DJN VIII.3.5).

In sum, Pufendorf’s analysis of punishment as a whole reflects the
positive and (re)constructive attitude of the law of nature, in both
pre- and post-civil conditions, particularly its injunctions to
forgive, to accept apologies and reparations, and basically so to act
as always to further and facilitate sociality (“inasmuch as [we]
can”), rather than to frustrate or make it impossible among
human beings as we actually find them. (DJN V.13.1, II.3.15, Pufendorf
1994a, p. 152) As such, it appears far removed from more absolutist or
categorical views of justice, such as the well-known statement (of
Kant in The Metaphysics of Morals [Die Metaphysik der
Sitten, 1797]) that a civil society must, before dissolving
itself, execute every convicted murderer remaining in its
prisons – a contrast that reveals well the gulf separating
Pufendorf’s natural law theory from essentialist or Platonizing views
(such as Leibniz’s) that challenged, and the Critical philosophy that
eventually replaced it. (Hunter 2001, 2003a)

Pufendorf’s natural law thinking developed in close interaction with
his views on other subjects such as history, religion, and
international relations; that is, his roles as academic philosopher,
court historian, and political apologist were only formally and not
intellectually distinct. (Seidler 2015) This is as evident in the
seminal reflections of his early Colloquium Anthologicum
lectures (Pufendorf 1995e, pp. 2–86) as it is in his later
works. Thus, the 1667 treatise on the Holy Roman Empire (Pufendorf
2007) not only studied its concrete history and institutions but also
examined the importance of sovereignty and state form, the tension
between civil and ecclesiastical authority, and the challenge of
foreign relations that emerged from these. Pufendorf’s so-called
works on religion (Pufendorf 2002a, 2002c, 1691b) engaged the same
topics, as well as associated questions about religious unification
and toleration, in the context of the early modern confessional
state. (Parkin and Stanton 2013; Döring 1998; Zurbuchen 1999,
1996, 1991; Hüning 2002b) Even Pufendorf’s concretely situated
and apparently partisan defenses of the Swedish interest (Pufendorf
1675a, 1680) – which were sometimes regarded as merely contingent
or opportunistic productions – exhibit the challenge (for
particular sovereigns and their historians) of applying the natural
law’s general injunctions to specific historical circumstances. Most
obviously, perhaps, his explicitly historical works – including
the long accounts of Sweden (Pufendorf 1686a, 1696) and of Brandenburg
(Pufendorf 1695b, 1784) that so distinguished him, but also his famous
Introductions (1682 and 1686; Pufendorf 2013 and
1976a) – give substance to and thus support his philosophical
analysis of the state. (Seidler 1996 and 1997, Piirimäe 2008,
Dufour 1991c, Krawczuk 2014) To be sure, the focus here is mainly on
the external relations and negotiations of particular states. But
sovereigns must conduct these as judiciously and effectively as their
states’ internal affairs, for it is useless to have internal peace if
a state is externally weak. (DJN VII.4.5) The two dimensions of
statecraft are clearly linked throughout Pufendorf’s opus, which urges
sovereigns (and those who create them) to consult both long- and
short-term interests of states, distinguishing the real from the
merely apparent ones (Pufendorf 2013, Preface), both to avoid the
(re)emergence of an internal or external state of nature and, more
generally, to satisfy the natural law’s injunction to further
sociality among humans.

Pufendorf’s (Latin) style is clear and careful, though also
sophisticated and colorful. For he not only mastered the art of
example but was also an aggressive, imaginative, and sometimes crass
polemicist when attacked – especially when cornered, when the
stakes were high, or when he deemed his opponents to be bellicose,
lazy, or intellectually dishonest. This alone assured that he was
eagerly and widely read. Many of his works – including De
statu imperii Germanici (1667), DJN, DO, and the Einleitung
zu der Historie der vornehmsten Reiche und Staaten (1682) –
were published repeatedly and translated into many European languages,
both during his lifetime and throughout most of the following century
(Othmer 1970, Luig 1972, Denzer 1972, Laurent 1982, Pufendorf 2013),
when they became staples of university education. Of particular note
in this extensive publication history were the influential French
translations by Jean Barbeyrac, whose long notes to DJN and DO
(including their Lockean leanings) were partially assumed into the
standard English translations of these works (if not immediately then
in later editions), specifically those by Basil Kennet (Pufendorf
1729) and Andrew Tooke (Pufendorf 1735). In fact there was
considerable interest in Pufendorf in England (starting with Tyrrell
and Locke – see Tyrrell 1681, esp. pp. 236 – 59, and
Thompson 1987), which also saw translations of various other works,
including The Present State of Germany (1690 and 1696,
Pufendorf 2007), The History of Popedom (Pufendorf 1691), the
Introduction (1695, Pufendorf 2013), Of the Nature and
Qualification of Religion, in Reference to Civil Society (1698,
Pufendorf 2002c), and The Divine Feudal Law (1703, Pufendorf
2002a). These and other translations are currently being reissued by
Liberty Fund, Inc. as part of its Natural Law and Enlightenment
Classics series, and are readily available in its Online
Library of Liberty. (See Other Internet Resources below.)
Pufendorf’s three main natural law works (including the early EJU)
were also reprinted and retranslated in the early twentieth century as
part of the Carnegie Endowment’s Classics of International
Law series, and are still occasionally reissued in this form
(Pufendorf 1995a–d, 1995 g–h, 2009). However, there was never a
collective edition of Pufendorf’s works in any language, before the
ongoing Gesammelte Werke (GW, ed. W. Schmidt-Biggemann)
issued by the Akademie Verlag (Walter de Gruyter). This edition
includes as Vol. 1 (Pufendorf 1996) the extant correspondence which,
though limited in comparison to other early moderns like Leibniz, is
nonetheless very useful, especially in conjunction with the polemical
essays in Eris Scandica (Pufendorf 2002b), which add
biographical and literary details. The shorter works collected by
Döring (Pufendorf 1995e) are not included in the GW, which,
however, is scheduled to encompass the Dissertationes
(Pufendorf 1675b), Monzambano (Pufendorf 1667; cf. 1994b,
1976b), and De habitu (Pufendorf 1687). Since the long
national histories are now easily obtainable in facsimile form (see
ZVDD, in Other Internet Resources below), all of Pufendorf’s known
writings will soon be readily available to scholars in some
contemporary form.

The discourse of natural law became the lingua franca of
18th-century moral, political, and social (including economic –
Hont 1987, 2005; Skinner 1995) thought. (Haakonssen 2012; see section
2.1 above, and “Natural Law 1625–1850” in Other Internet Resources
below) Pufendorf contributed much thereto by initiating the
self-referential genre of the ‘history of natural law’,
wherein he located himself in relation to Grotius, Hobbes and other
predecessors. (Sample of Controversies [Specimen
controversiarum], 1678, Ch. 1: “On the Origin and Progress
of the Discipline of Natural Law”; later included in Eris
Scandica, 1686, Pufendorf 2002b) His modest beginning was much
enlarged by Barbeyrac in “An Historical and Critical Account of
the Science of Morality …,” the Preface to his 1706
translation of Pufendorf’s DJN (Barbeyrac 2005), and by Pufendorf’s
German friend and disciple, Christian Thomasius, in his Nearly
Complete History of Natural Law (Paulo plenior historia juris
naturalis, 1719, Thomasius 2011), as well as many others in the
18th century. (Glafey [1739] 1965, Hochstrasser 2000) As in Pufendorf
himself, a major theme of the genre was that of sociality
(sociability, benevolence), which was variously interpreted,
criticized, and defended in both secular and religious
contexts. (Chiodi 2009, Piirimäe and Schmidt 2015) The notion’s
appeal in the British domain – where a way had been prepared by
Richard Cumberland (1632–1718, Cumberland 2005), whom Pufendorf
cited repeatedly in the 1684 edition of DJN – is demonstrated by
Gershom Carmichael’s (1672–1729) influential student edition
(1718) of Pufendorf’s De officio (Carmichael 2002), and by
the inaugural lecture “On the Natural Sociality of Men”
(1730) of his student and successor at Glasgow, Francis Hutcheson
(1694–1746), whose thought was strongly influenced by natural
law. (Hutcheson 1993, 2006, 2007) So too were many other British
moralists and social theorists, especially in the so-called Scottish
Enlightenment, including George Turnbull (1698–1748), John
Millar (1735–1801), Thomas Reid (1710–1796), and Adam
Smith (1723–1790). (Haakonssen 1996, Moore and Silverthorne
1983, Moore 2006) Through them and others, including direct exposure
to Pufendorf’s own, often reprinted works, natural law thought also
became part of the intellectual inheritance of the American Revolution
and constitutionalism. (Welzel 1952, White 1978, Augat 1985, Heideking
1995, Haakonssen 1991, Logan 2013)

On the Continent, Pufendorf’s influence was felt during the 18th
century through the so-called civil enlightenment of C. Thomasius and
his school, and through the frequent republication and study of his
own works. Their juridical approach to natural law persisted until the
end of the century, especially in German law faculties (Lestition
1989, Klippel 2009, Schröder 2010), where it provided a
counterweight to the metaphysical, perfectionist, and in a sense
neoscholastic tradition of natural law associated with Leibniz and
Christian Wolff (1679–1754). (Hunter 2007, 2003a, 2001;
Lutterbeck 2002, Haakonssen 2006, Ikadatsu 2002, Ottmann 2006, Schmidt
2007, Schneider 2001) Pufendorf himself maintained a presence not only
through his natural law works but also the historical writings,
especially the many versions of his Introduction (1682),
which was continually revised and appropriated by others to suit the
times, until nearly the end of the century. (Pufendorf 2013, Seidler
2013) Indeed, it was largely through this work and those of its
editors, commentators, and imitators, including Nikolaus Hieronymus
Gundling (1671–1729) and Johann Peter Lud[e]wig
(1668–1743), that Pufendorf entered the 18th-century discourse
about the relation of law, politics, and history, and stayed relevant
as an international theorist. His empirically grounded mix of history,
philosophy, and law led also into cameralism (Brückner 1977),
into the so-called Göttingen School (Hammerstein 1972 and 1986,
Vierhaus 1987), and to the associated discipline of Statistik
(statistics, from the Italian statista [statesman] and
ragion di stato), with its focus on the concrete institutions
and functions of states (Zande 2010, Valera 1986, Pasquino 1986). This
included Gottfried Achenwall (1719–1772), on whom Kant lectured for
many years during both his pre-Critical and Critical
periods. (Achenwall 1762, Hruschka 1986, Streidl 2000) Moreover, it
underlay the century’s legal codification schemes, which attempted
still to base positive on natural law in some sense. (Hartung 1998,
Ferronato 2005) In an equally broad sort of way, Pufendorf was also
predecessor to Jean-Jacques Burlamaqui (1694–1748) and Emmerich
de Vattel (1714–1767), whose respective works on natural and
international law were notable examples of the genre, albeit ones also
influenced by its Wolffian version. Moreover, Pufendorf and natural
law were present in the Encyclopédie (Schröder 2001,
Burns 1999), as well as in the prehistory of the French Revolution
(Caradonna 2006, Edelstein 2014). Finally, Pufendorf’s theory of the
state had a significant formative influence on specific thinkers like
Rousseau, who criticized him and other “friends of
despotism” for undermining human freedom while nonetheless
borrowing heavily from his political conceptions. (McAdam 1963,
Derathé 1992, Wokler 1994, Silvestrini 2010, Douglass 2015)

Kant’s Critical philosophy does not distinguish clearly between the
rather different streams of natural law that it is usually thought to
have surpassed. (Hochstrasser 2000, Hartung 1998, Haakonssen 2006)
Indeed, when Kant arrived on the scene the two had already been
thoroughly commingled, and the discipline as a whole straddled an
uncomfortable position between the rational and the empirical. Its
situation now became increasingly precarious, as it was subjected to
epistemological and metaphysical challenges that it had not been
designed to meet, and whose purist, a priori assumptions it would
reject. (Hunter 2001, 2002, 2005) Like much else, Kant effectively
folded natural law into the dialectical pre-history of his own
system. In fact, he hardly mentions it at all, since it does not fit
the formal schematic of his conception of the history of philosophy as
a conflict between dogmatic rationalism and sceptical empiricism. In
ethics, natural law is implicitly dismissed in the critique of
technical and prudential imperatives, and in political philosophy it
appears similarly wanting in the face of pure Right. To be sure,
Kant’s own views in both areas – including the notion of
categorical obligation, the historical-political mechanism of
’unsocial sociability’, and the trademark concept of ‘autonomy’
mediated by Rousseau’s General Will – owed significant debts to
Pufendorf and the voluntarist tradition. (Schneewind 1993, 2009, 2010;
Kersting 2006) However, since his system gave that problematic a new
(in)significance, it did not play an explicit role in his
discussions. Kant’s sole mention of Pufendorf (in the company of
Grotius and Vattel) is a vague and dismissive reference to the
“wretched comforters” (leidige Tröster) who
are criticized – in the essay on Perpetual Peace
(Zum ewigen Frieden, 1795) – for their overly flexible,
empirical, and situational treatment of the law of nations (ius
gentium). Ironically, that approach (including sovereigns’ resort
to prudence and the right of necessity) had previously been considered
a strength, but Kant saw it as little more than a recipe for endless
war. In its place, he substituted a universal, necessary, and absolute
metaphysics of right – albeit in a transcendental vein –
precisely of the sort that the ‘modern’ natural law theory of Hobbes
and Pufendorf had originally sought to displace because of its
pernicious social consequences.

The actual refutation or, rather, historical erasure of natural law
was the work of post-Kantian historians like C. F. Stäudlin
(1761–1826), J. G. Buhle (1763–1807), and W. G. Tennemann
(1761–1819), whose versions of the history of moral philosophy
ironically left Grotius, Pufendorf and Thomasius (Barbeyrac’s
protagonists) with only minor roles to play. Even so, natural law
remained a presence in the nineteenth century. Thus, Fichte (The
Foundations of Natural Law [Grundlage des Naturrechts nach
Prinzipien der Wissenschaftslehre, 1796–97]), Schelling
(A New Deduction of Natural Law [Neue Deduction des
Naturrechts, 1797]), and the young Hegel (The Scientific Ways
of Treating Natural Law [Über die wissenschaftlichen
Behandlungsarten des Naturrechts, 1802–3]) all published
works on “natural law” (Naturrecht) –
showing that the idiom remained serviceable. (Klippel 1997, 2012) In
the British domain, insofar as it was not also ‘idealized’, Bentham’s
vague and dismissive attitude toward ‘natural rights’, and the
comparatively circumscribed ‘ethics’ of Mill’s utilitarianism, found
little connection with modern natural law, even through its own
eighteenth-century inheritance which that approach had helped to
shape. The rebirth of Thomism in the Catholic world toward the end of
the century, and the permutation of natural into human rights before
and after the First World War, made the disjunction and the amnesia
complete.

This debate continues, albeit in different registers and with
equivocal notions of ‘natural law’. For about half of the twentieth
century (in philosophy, law, and international relations), natural law
referred to a revived Scholasticism or Neo-Thomism. This was joined
after mid-century by the ‘secular’ natural law of John
Finnis (1940– ) and Robert P. George (1955– ), later by
the naturalism (or neo-Aristotelianism) of Amartya Sen (1933– )
and Martha Nussbaum (1947– ), and most recently by a new kind of
Protestant natural law with roots in sixteenth-century Reformed
theology (Grabhill 2006, VanDrunen 2010, Witte Jr. 2008). All these
approaches involve essentialist claims of sorts, even if empirically
supported, and together with a Kantian metaphysics of the person that
is variously present in versions of John Rawls (1921–2002) and
Jürgen Habermas (1929– ) they provide ontological,
procedural, or constructivist foundations for discourse about human
rights and dignity, and support for international organizations and
mechanisms that police them. Accordingly, the supposed ‘right to
punish’ is in full force again, as are duties to assist, to rescue,
and the like – understandably so. However, despite attempts to
enlist Pufendorf in such causes by finding the prehistory of pivotal
notions like rights, dignity, and equality in his texts (Saastamoinen
2010, Fiorillo 2013a, Müller 2011), his natural law is actually
more akin to contrarian approaches like the neo-Hobbesianism of Carl
Schmitt (1888–1985), the agonism of Chantal Mouffe (1943–)
and James Tully (1946–), the realism of Raymond Geuss
(1946– ), and even the pragmatic naturalism of Philip Kitcher
(1947– ). These perspectives are not necessarily opposed to the
practical aims of the views they oppose and criticize, it may be
useful to note (also about Pufendorf), but merely insist upon fewer
suppositions, less presumption, and more modest goals.

The following is not a complete list of Pufendorf’s publications and
their various editions and translations. Original editions appear only
if mentioned in the text or bibliography, and if there have been no
later versions. The latter are included based on their accessibility
to contemporary readers and the existence of translations into
European languages other than Latin.

An Introduction to the History of the Principal Kingdoms and
States of Europe, J. Crull (trans.), M. J. Seidler (ed.),
(Series: Natural Law and Enlightenment Classics,
K. Haakonssen [ed.]), Indianapolis, Liberty Fund; new edition of
London, Gilliflower, 1695.

Of the Law of Nature and Nations: Eight Books, B.
Kennett (trans.), … Fourth Edition, … To Which Is Now
Prefixed Mr. Barbeyrac’s Prefatory Discourse, … Done into
English by Mr. [George] Carew, Buffalo, NY, Hein; see Pufendorf 1729.

The Whole Duty of Man according to the Law of Nature,
A. Tooke (trans.), 5th ed., London, Gosling; newly edited as Pufendorf
2003.

1729

Of the Law of Nature and Nations, B. Kennett (trans.),
4th ed., to which are added all the large notes of Mr. Barbeyrac,
… [and] Mr. Barbeyrac’s prefatory discourse,
containing an historical and critical account of the science of
morality … done into English by Mr. Carew, London,
Walthoe; translation of Pufendorf 1706; see Pufendorf 2005.

1719

[ Esaias Pufendorf? ], Memoirs of Sweden, Containing a
Particular Account of the Great Change which Happened in the
Government of that Kingdom, in the Reign of King Charles XI…. /
Written by a Foreign Minister Residing in Sweden at That Time,
translated from the French, London, Innys.

Barbeyrac, Jean, 2005, “An Historical and Critical Account
of the Science of Morality, And the Progress it has made in the World,
from the earliest Times …,” Mr. [George] Carew (trans.),
or Prefatory Discourse to Samuel Pufendorf, Of the Law of Nature
and Nations, B. Kennett (trans.), 4th ed., Buffalo, NY, Hein;
reprint of London, S. Aris, 1729; in Pufendorf 2005.

Carmichael, Gershom, 2002, Natural Rights on the Threshold of
the Scottish Enlightenment. The Writings of Gershom Carmichael,
M. Silverthorne (trans.), J. Moore and M. Silverthorne (eds.),
(Series: Natural Law and Enlightenment Classics,
K. Haakonssen [ed.]), Indianapolis, Liberty Fund. New edition of
Supplements and Observations upon The Two Books of Samuel
Pufendorf’s On the Duty of Man and Citizen according to the Law
of Nature composed for the use of students in the
Universities, Edinburgh, Mosman, 1724; A Synopsis of Natural
Theology, Edinburgh, Paton, 1729; A Short Introduction to
Logic, Edinburgh, Mosman, 1722; and Philosophical
Theses, Glasgow, Sanders, 1699, 1707.

Aarsleff, H., 2011, “Pufendorf and Condillac on Law and
Language,” Journal of the Philosophy of History 5(3):
308–21.

Ahnert, T., 2013, “Samuel Pufendorf and Religious
Intolerance in the Early Enlightenment,” in Parkin and Stanton
(eds.), pp. 15–33.

–––, 2009, “Epicureanism and the
Transformation of Natural Law in the Early German
Enlightenment,” in Epicurus in the Enlightenment,
N. Leddy and A. S. Lifschutz (eds.), Oxford, Voltaire Foundation,
pp. 53–68.

–––, 2006, Religion and the Origins of the
German Enlightenment. Faith and the Reform of Learning in the Thought
of Christian Thomasius, Rochester, NY: U. of Rochester Pr.

Cavallar, G., 2008, “Vitoria, Grotius, Pufendorf, Wolff and
Vattel: Accomplices of European Colonialism and Exploitation or True
Cosmopolitans?” Journal of the History of International
Law 10(2): 181–209.

–––, 2002, The Rights of Strangers. Theories
of International Hospitality, the Global Community, and Political
Justice since Vitoria, Burlington, VT, Ashgate,
pp. 189–208.

–––, 2004, “Autonomy in Modern Natural
Law,” in New Essays on the History of Autonomy. A Collection
Honoring J. B. Schneewind, N. Brender and L. Krasnoff (eds.), New
York, Cambridge U. Pr., pp. 110–129.

Daston, L., and M. Stolleis (eds.), 2008, Natural Law and Laws
of Nature in Early Modern Europe: Jurisprudence, Theology, Moral and
Natural Philosophy. Burlington, VT, Ashgate.

–––, 2010, “Leibniz’s critique of
Pufendorf. A dispute in the eve of the Enlightenment,” in
The Practice of Reason. Leibniz and his Controversies,
M. Dascal (ed.), Philadelphia, John Benjamins, pp. 245–72.

–––, 2004, “Protestant Natural Law
Theory. A General Interpretation,” in New Essays on the
History of Autonomy. A Collection Honoring J.B. Schneewind,
N. Brender and L. Krasnoff (eds.), New York, Cambridge U. Pr.,
pp. 92–109.

–––, 1991, “From Natural Law to the Rights
of Man: a European Perspective on American Debates,” in A
Culture of Rights. The Bill of Rights in Philosophy, Politics, and Law
– 1791 and 1991, M. J. Lacey and K. Haakonssen (eds.), New
York, Cambridge U. Pr., 19–61.

Moore, J., 2006, “Natural Rights in the Scottish
Enlightenment,” in The Cambridge History of
Eighteenth-Century Political Thought, M. Goldie and R. Wokler
(eds.), New York, Cambridge U. Pr., pp. 291–316.

Moore, J., and M. Silverthorne, 1995, “Protestant
Theologies, Limited Sovereignties: Natural Law and the Conditions of
Union in the German Empire, the Netherlands and Great Britain,”
in A Union for Empire. Political Thought and the British Union of
1707, J. Robertson (ed.), Cambridge, Cambridge U. Pr.,
171–97.

Salter, J., 1980, “Grotius and Pufendorf on the Right of
Necessity,” History of Political Thought 26(2):
284–302.

Saunders, D., 2009, “Hegemon History: Pufendorf’s Shifting
Perspectives on France and French Power,” in War, the State
and International Law in Seventeenth-Century Europe, O. Asbach
and P. Schröder (eds.), Burlington, VT, Ashgate,
pp. 211–30.

Saunders, D., and I. Hunter, 2003, “Bringing the State to
England: Andrew Tooke’s Translation of Samuel Pufendorf’s De
officio hominis et civis,” History of Political
Thought 24(2): 218–34.

Scattola, M., 2011, “Scientific revolution in the moral
sciences: The controversy between Samuel Pufendorf and the Lutheran
theologians in the late seventeenth century,” in
Controversies within the Scientific Revolution, M. Dascal and
V. D. Boantza (eds.), Amsterdam, John Benjamins,
pp. 251–75.

–––, 2009c, “ ‘Scientia Iuris and
Ius Naturae’: The Jurisprudence of the Holy Roman Empire in the
Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” in A History of the
Philosophy of Law in the Civil Law World, 1600–1900, D. Canale,
P. Grossi, and H. Hofmann (eds.), New York, Springer, Chapter 1, pp.:
1–41.

Schneewind, J. B., 2010, Essays on the History of Moral
Philosophy, New York: Oxford U. Pr.

–––, 2009, “Good Out of Evil: Kant and the
Idea of Unsocial Sociability,” in Kant’s ‘Idea for a
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